Remove HP bars, revert pres changes, get rid of lifeform eggs (again), nerf boneshield, and go back to compmod cysting. Start with that.

Boneshield has been changed in the mod that is currently being worked on. Lifeform eggs have been removed.

Regarding cysting and pres - that will be looked into. May change pres back to the way it was before the increase rate in vanilla if it doesn't play well comp with the moderate changes.
Health Bars is a big part of the game in vanilla, and might throw people off not seeing them in comp. It is a huge assist and dumbs down the game. May end up removing them, will wait for feedback on that.

I disagree that health bars are a big part in vanilla. I mean considering the lifespan of NS they are a very new addition to the game and most people are still most familar with playing without them. And yea, they dumb down the game and that alone should be a reason to remove them.

One of the most popular NS2 pub servers in Europe already has them disabled.

Mephilles -
Good start to your mod. Good that you lowered the machine gun weight. I think it should be basically the same as shotgun.

It's also good you're starting to nerf boneshield, but I think you have to go more in that direction. I would do something similar to my mod where it does 0 armor regen, increase damage block, and reduce the cooldown time to whatever works best. It doesn't make sense for armor regen to be part of competetive. It's the lifeform with the most health and the only instant regen function, it's going to be really annoying in competitive with that in the game. It's already hard to kill onos with a good team around the onos.

Also, I think you need to remove lifeform eggs at a minimum to make this work for competitive. The marine team has to know where the aliens stand based on what they see on the field. Also, part of playing aliens is figuring out who's going to go gorge during an arc push and other things. Who is going to go lerk to try to save the game. You can't give them the ability to drop free lifeform eggs (no pres sacrifice), I think it's too strong of an ability. It makes the marines have to guess what is happening, and they don't always get the gain from a big kill.

The next things I believe are coming to Mephs balance mod are as follows.

1. Remove lifeform eggs... for obvious reasons, they have to go.
2. Alter cysts, not back to old compmod, but making it so that infestation retreats when the cyst is below 50% maturity... it is in our experience that people don't actually care about the cysts themselves, its the infestation that they bring that causes the issues... changing this should prevent them from being so OP in competitive.
3. Remove Healthbars... While I personally don't dislike healthbars in the slightest, in fact I think they are a good addition to NS2, they do not belong in a competitive environment, they provide way to much information for them to be allowed to remain.
4. further nerfs to Boneshield (healing will be reduced from the current 70 to 50, and the damage reduction will be reduced from 40% to 35%)


After that we will start to look into nerfing Focus in some way, and swapping silence to shade hive and vampirism to shift hive.

The MG as it is in mephs mod actually feels pretty nice, in old compmod the HMG was actually slower than the MG is in mephs mod.

(note, this is all based off of discussions I have had with Meph, not everything I say will be 100% accurate all the time so you'll have to wait for confirmation from Meph. But I gather that this is the way forward)

^Good ideas, but I wish you would consider removing armor regen from boneshield completely out of the game. I don't think it's going to make comp players happy. It also just doesn't feel right that the lifeform gets an instant regen. It really feels like a pub player ability like the health bars. Onos should not be about choosing to get a health pack (I know it's armor) whenever they feel like it. Aliens have always had to heal on something or have had to stay out of a fight to regen. Now you are giving them an ability to heal in a fight, just take it out of the game.

Another way to look at it is this, if you remove health bars (which is probably a good idea for competitive overall) then you should also remove the armor regen of boneshield.
Why have an ability that allows for a certain amount of bullets to do damage but is also healing it at the same time? Two opposite things happening at the same time. Seems like it would be tough to judge how much health is left also. Why not just allow it to work as before... allow a certain amount of bullets to damage and it's really clear how much damage you are doing to the onos and roughly how much health it has left.

TAWmod - incest at its highest level

Tbh, I wanted to avoid swapping silence over to a different hive etc because it changes things away from vanilla... Start as you mean to go on, we want these mods to remain as true to the vanilla experience as possible, but intended for the higher tiers of player skill and teamplay.

Boneshield isn't a bad mechanic, is it different? yes, is it bad? no... is it imbalance? yes, oh hells yes... so nerf it but keep the premise...

Also, what would be the point in both yourself and meph making exactly the same changes? surely it would be better for the two to have very distinct differences so that the public can comment on which they prefer after play?

I think having 2 mods testing different things while having the same target and a lot of things in common is a great way to do things... we can learn from each others mistakes and get inspiration from each other etc. For instance I think your Pres changes are a fantastic idea, and I honestly believe it should totally replace the vanilla Pres system... but I don't think its suitable for competitive because it creates pres inconsistencies that shouldn't be present at that level of play.

Kash, Boneshield is terrible designed in so many ways, I am surprised there is someone who thinks it isn't a Bad mechanic. It is the worst designed gameplay Element in the game right now.

Also I believe there is no need to shift silence back to shade Hive. The big advantage of having silence and celerity both on shift is to make it impossible to combine them.

Home says

Kash, Boneshield is terrible designed in so many ways, I am surprised there is someone who thinks it isn't a Bad mechanic. It is the worst designed gameplay Element in the game right now.

Also I believe there is no need to shift silence back to shade Hive. The big advantage of having silence and celerity both on shift is to make it impossible to combine them.

Yeah, I don't know why people are so against silence and celerity being on the same hive. I guess it's because you have to go shift, but not being able to combine them is a good thing. Yes, you have to go shift hive pretty much every time, but that was done before.

Well, what i've been told so far is that a skulk with celerity is (obviously) more difficult to hit due to its speed, so it can bait and a silence skulk ambushes, making that already common tactic even more powerful than it ever was, and thats on one hive.

Also, having silence and celerity together requires two hives, and requires you to sack the idea of having carapace or regen, which are both very strong combat upgrades.

but as I said above, its good that we don't think alike in this situation, because it means that both mods will have different aspects to them that can be tested and refined... my hope is that eventually both mods will be nicely balanced and play equally, leading to a public vote of which changes people prefer.. e.g boneshield, once its been refined and balanced, which does the majority want, mephs (which is closest to vanilla) or Decks (which is closest to the old version of boneshield)... do that with all the things the mods do differently and then combine the two mods to make a "fun" compmod that the majority have had a hand in helping make it work.

That is likely an idealistic view, but fuck it, if you're going to try for something, may as well try to make it the best it can be.

Boneshield needs to be removed. Like home said: NO lifeform should be able to heal itself except the gorge. This ability breaks heavily with the concept of NS2.
Make the boneshield like before: A bullettaking shieldwall. Not more. its very hard in comp matches to kill an onos. and i would say with boneshield its nearly impossible.

Rammler says

Boneshield needs to be removed. Like home said: NO lifeform should be able to heal itself except the gorge. This ability breaks heavily with the concept of NS2.
Make the boneshield like before: A bullettaking shieldwall. Not more. its very hard in comp matches to kill an onos. and i would say with boneshield its nearly impossible.

While I do agree that boneshield should be reversed, have you met the Fade? Advanced metabolize. You might want to change the statement to gorges and fades.

Rammler says

Boneshield needs to be removed. Like home said: NO lifeform should be able to heal itself except the gorge. This ability breaks heavily with the concept of NS2.
Make the boneshield like before: A bullettaking shieldwall. Not more. its very hard in comp matches to kill an onos. and i would say with boneshield its nearly impossible.

Tyrwing says

While I do agree that boneshield should be reversed, have you met the Fade? Advanced metabolize. You might want to change the statement to gorges and fades.

May also want to think about regen... and vampirism...

In its incarnation in vanilla, Boneshield is OP as fuck, no one is denying it.

It CAN be balanced, and we will try that... you guys can feel free to revert it in your mod, but as you have with pres, we would like to try something different with our mod too.

Tyrwing says

Rammler says

Boneshield needs to be removed. Like home said: NO lifeform should be able to heal itself except the gorge. This ability breaks heavily with the concept of NS2.
Make the boneshield like before: A bullettaking shieldwall. Not more. its very hard in comp matches to kill an onos. and i would say with boneshield its nearly impossible.

While I do agree that boneshield should be reversed, have you met the Fade? Advanced metabolize. You might want to change the statement to gorges and fades.

yep. mean fades and gorges ;-)

Kash says

Rammler says

Boneshield needs to be removed. Like home said: NO lifeform should be able to heal itself except the gorge. This ability breaks heavily with the concept of NS2.
Make the boneshield like before: A bullettaking shieldwall. Not more. its very hard in comp matches to kill an onos. and i would say with boneshield its nearly impossible.

Tyrwing says

While I do agree that boneshield should be reversed, have you met the Fade? Advanced metabolize. You might want to change the statement to gorges and fades.

May also want to think about regen... and vampirism...

In its incarnation in vanilla, Boneshield is OP as fuck, no one is denying it.

It CAN be balanced, and we will try that... you guys can feel free to revert it in your mod, but as you have with pres, we would like to try something different with our mod too.

There is a big difference. Regen and Vampirism are UPGRADES and therefore totally fine. Onos can equip them too and nobody is complaining about it. Also note that they are passive while boneshield is an active upgrade which makes the healing inconsistent and too strong.

Tyrwing is right about the Metabolize, its implementation is bad and it should be a researchable passive upgrade, it basically acts as one. Its healing ability is something I do not like either, but it is atleast kind of balanced and consistent.

Gorge is different because of its role.

Home says

Tyrwing is right about the Metabolize, its implementation is bad and it should be a researchable passive upgrade, it basically acts as one. Its healing ability is something I do not like either, but it is atleast kind of balanced and consistent.

That right there, is the perfect example of what I am talking about... advanced meta is okay BECAUSE its been BALANCED.

Boneshield can be balanced, so we are trying to do that, I do understand that some people will not like this idea, and that is fine, you are free to like/dislike any ideas you want... but essentially, the way I would like boneshield to eventually function is so that in combat, if it is used, it will act almost exactly the same as the boneshield without armour regen... it will effectively negate around 75% of incoming damage... but if someone used it out of combat it would heal a small amount of the onos' total armour.

The ability CAN be balanced. It will just take a little trial and error.

Kash says

Home says

Tyrwing is right about the Metabolize, its implementation is bad and it should be a researchable passive upgrade, it basically acts as one. Its healing ability is something I do not like either, but it is atleast kind of balanced and consistent.

That right there, is the perfect example of what I am talking about... advanced meta is okay BECAUSE its been BALANCED.

Boneshield can be balanced, so we are trying to do that, I do understand that some people will not like this idea, and that is fine, you are free to like/dislike any ideas you want... but essentially, the way I would like boneshield to eventually function is so that in combat, if it is used, it will act almost exactly the same as the boneshield without armour regen... it will effectively negate around 75% of incoming damage... but if someone used it out of combat it would heal a small amount of the onos' total armour.

The ability CAN be balanced. It will just take a little trial and error.

Of course it can be balanced. Everything can. But why would you balance something that is so EXTREMELY TERRIBLE designed from a gameplay perspective instead of make it a better mechanic? I cannot understand that.

Home says

Of course it can be balanced. Everything can. But why would you balance something that is so EXTREMELY TERRIBLE designed from a gameplay perspective instead of make it a better mechanic? I cannot understand that.

That statement is subjective, you cannot state an opinion as fact, it is only an opinion.

I like Boneshield having a heal ability, I understand the premise behind it and I appreciate it... its okay to disagree with me, as it is for me to disagree with you... But me and meph both agree that most of what his mod will do is balance what is in vanilla to make it work in 6 vs 6... not revert everything so we can play season 8 compmod again.

Really I cannot stress this enough, The game has changed, get over it or move on... stop living in the past, vanilla is totally different now. if we want a chance of rebuilding a comp scene, we must make the differences between comp and vanilla as small as possible... having abilities do the same thing in a more balanced way IS the way to go forward.

There are 3 things (at the moment) that will be "changed" from vanilla:-

1. Pres will be lowered to 1 instead of 1.25, reason: the pres flow of 1.25 is intended so that rookies can go lifeforms more often and learn to play, this is competitive, they should already know how to play to at least a basic level, so a higher pres flow shouldn't be needed.
2. Silence and Vampirism will be switched, because silence and carapace on the same hive is too strong.
3. Remove healthbars... Personally I am an advocate of healthbars, I believe they are a good thing and it will help the game be better... on pubs... in competitive it is just plain bad, it squashes the skill gap effectively lowering the skill ceiling and raising the skill floor at the same time, therefore it should be removed.

Other than those 3 things, everything will (at the moment) function in the same way it does in vanilla, but we will try to balance it so that nothing is "too strong".

if you want any chance at players coming back to comp you'll need to revert the changes. i know that you personally dont want old players to come back, but instead recruit new ones because then taw will be #1 team world for a week. but if you look at the truth you'll see that a realistic number of pub players coming to comp ns2 lies between 5 to 10 players. if you're gonna revert changes to what people know has been balanced over the course of a few years you'll probably have lots of old players coming back... because ns2 is still the most fun game they've ever played.

look at the player numbers and you'll see UWEs player retention isnt working out. and if that isnt working out, how are you gonna recruit players for comp ns2?

tbh Bauer, you massively misjudge me (as i'm sure I have misjudged you in many ways also).

1. Its not that I don't want old players to come back, its that I don't want "certain" old players to come back.
2. I couldn't care less if TAW had a #1 team... ever... I'm in it for fun, I enjoy teamplay, even if its not at the highest level. I don't want a badge of honour, I don't care about the hall of fame, I don't want to be "the best", I want to play and have fun with friends.

On another note, "player retention" is working, people just don't understand how to read basic statistics. "oh but you can see that there is a net loss here", no, what you see is the typical, predictable percentage fluctuations that happen every year, at this time of year, to every game... because new games are coming out, summer time makes people want to be out of the house and doing other things and a whole hell of a lot of other reason.
But the fact remains we have a higher playercount and unique logins this year than we had last year at this exact time... and thats after the "big comp walkout".

But yeah, thats just my opinion, feel free to disagree.

I think you are naive when you think some of those players would not have logged in without HP bars or the boneshield. The only real consequence of all those changes was the death of season 9.

Tonight we will be holding a playtest for deck's balance mod. The playtest will be during the usual captains night playtimes, if you would like to partake in the balance tests simply be here for captains night.

This also means that we have decided that if we choose to use a balance mod for future seasons it will be this one (deck and steelcaps). I will be creating a more detailed news post about all this after tonights playtest.

ns2 90% off
ye player retention is working
we had 1000 new players this month, pdt is best

BauerJankins says

ns2 90% off
ye player retention is working
we had 1000 new players this month, pdt is best

all hail the pdt
RIP Kash
RIP TAWtism mod

Tico says

Tonight we will be holding a playtest for deck's balance mod. The playtest will be during the usual captains night playtimes, if you would like to partake in the balance tests simply be here for captains night.

This also means that we have decided that if we choose to use a balance mod for future seasons it will be this one (deck and steelcaps). I will be creating a more detailed news post about all this after tonights playtest.

Wasn't it 19:30 pm EDT? Thats is 1:30 am here in Germany.......

I think for the game to be balanced, all the new op'd stuff has to be taken out of the game or changed. I don't know if it has to go exactly back to the way it was before to still be a fun game. It sounds like health bars will be removed from the comp mod. So no field player will be able to see health bars going forward that plays comp ns2. There is some talk about having the commander see the health bars only. Not sure if that will be added. Lifeform eggs already removed. Boneshield is already changed so it doesn't heal or regen the onos in any way. You can move with the machine gun similar to the shotgun.

There is more talk about changing focus and other ideas. I want to remove focus ability to one swipe or one bite a marine that has 0 armor left and full health. So we are going to probably be nerfing focus damage and seeing what works best. We will try to be testing this mod a bunch before the next season starts to try to get it to work best for the comp community. Pres may go back to the way it was in comp before the rate increase of vanilla. It depends on if a new moderate pres change idea works for comp.

Not everyone is going to agree on every change, but hopefully it works for most people and keeps a balanced/fun game.

At least a few things I want to open up to the forum:
1) Regarding cysts: what are people's thoughts on this and how it currently is in the vanilla game. Do we need cysts to be exactly as they were before or can we change an aspect or two to make this still work in comp?
2) Rupture - ability to parasite marines. There is some talk about moving this to biomass 6. Keeping it in the game and giving aliens an easier way to parasite marines in the mid to late game when there is potentially less skulks on the field. What are people's thoughts on this?
3) Gorge bhop - movement ability. Currently, there is no bhop or advanced movement in comp for gorge. Does this need to be added? Should it be same as before or what are people's thoughts on this?

The test will begin at 8pm edt for everyone that is wondering, i apologize for the europeans that cant attend but youre more then welcome to test, decks balance mod, whenever you like and provide feedback.

This will be the balance mod we will use so start providing feedback. We will make a new forum post for feedback soon.

Tico says

The test will begin at 8pm edt for everyone that is wondering, i apologize for the europeans that cant attend but youre more then welcome to test, decks balance mod, whenever you like and provide feedback.

This will be the balance mod we will use so start providing feedback. We will make a new forum post for feedback soon.

Hopefully we can get it added to the comp servers soon as well. That way it can be played in gathers.

Deckard says

At least a few things I want to open up to the forum:
1) Regarding cysts: what are people's thoughts on this and how it currently is in the vanilla game. Do we need cysts to be exactly as they were before or can we change an aspect or two to make this still work in comp?
2) Rupture - ability to parasite marines. There is some talk about moving this to biomass 6. Keeping it in the game and giving aliens an easier way to parasite marines in the mid to late game when there is potentially less skulks on the field. What are people's thoughts on this?
3) Gorge bhop - movement ability. Currently, there is no bhop or advanced movement in comp for gorge. Does this need to be added? Should it be same as before or what are people's
thoughts on this?

First: I think commander should still see healthbars.the commander was always the guy who was able to see how mich hp a fleeing lifeform has.

1) in pub: definitely too strong. you can cyst the whole map, place shades and structures behind enemys lines. and you can spam like 10-20 cysts in one room and forcing marines to cut them ALL. thats a big investment for rines in time and ammo. in comp: i am not sure. with coveres lanes there should not be the problem of structures behind the lines. the immortal cysts can be a new mechanic too thwart marines.

2) rupture is too strong. no ability or feature should parasite rines without the skulks marking. the commander should not have so much power to make marines visible without any player nearby.
and if you have only higher lifeforms on the field it is part of the balance that you are not able to parasite marines anymore. thats the cost for the big lifeform investment.

3) gorge bunnyhop was succesfully integrated in the last compmod. i would keep it