Deckard says

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.

That would be really really nice.

There is some talk about having the commander see the health bars only. Not sure if that will be added.

Imo the health information for comms does not fit into the game and should be removed too, but it is far less game breaking than health bars for field players. It always looked like the health info for comms was only built in to give commanding a more RTS feeling. But yea, people are used to it and I wouldn't really care if it stays in.

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?

My thoughts on it:

1) I do not think cysts need to be exactly like before, but I think the current implementation is the worst. You should either: Make the cysts die again when unconnected. Or: Remove the cysting mechanic completely and let infestatino spread from build structures. I would like the second one more but it would be obviously a HUGE change on how the game plays I believe and would need many many other adjustments for it to work, so I would consider that not realistic for a mod.

But shooting cysts is just not fun. And it also does not work with the current balance. Marines have to hunt every single cyst to prevent it from spreading infestation. It is kind of a middleground between no cyst mechanic and the old one, but hasn't got the needed adjustments for that and is also the least fun.

2) Personally I would like that being removed too. When you can manage to have almost all your team being lifeforms, you are basically trading your parasiting ability for other things. That is balanced and adds a bit of depth to it.

But I also believe the effectiveness or balance of rupture also depends on if cysts die or not.

3) I would add it. Apart of balance I think more and dynamic movement possibilities can only be for the better. Because it is always more fun and carries that dynamic over to the engagements too.

cysts need huge nerfs and really good ideas if you're not gonna go back to old comp mod
rupture can be tested i guess but i don't think it's gonna be fun to play with
keep bhop

I'll chime in since I'm still interested in comp play for this game.

Aliens:

Cysting - This needs to be changed. Cysts should not be 400+ damage to kill. I don't particularly mind them not exploding when the chain is cut. What I do mind is a commander who is competent and knows he/she can just spam this and drop nodes on a broken cyst chain. Simba would have no problem exploiting this. Hell, I did it in the gather we had a few days ago.

We ran into this problem in Div 1 a while back, Cysts were a huge problem since alien commanders couldn't spend their res on anything else impactful. So what followed was just cysts being spammed. That's why they were nerfed in the first place. This needs to be addressed as an overall balance change.

Suggestion:

Option 1.

Revert it to the way it was in the original comp mod. Cysts fully matured had roughly 250 hp. Further away from the hive, longer it took to mature.

Option 2.

Reduce fully matured HP of ALL cysts across the board, don't worry about maturation rate. Roughly 200 hp for each cysts. The cysts would still spread creep at same rate, HP nerf would be needed across the board.

Pres income:

UWE felt the game needed to be more forgiving for newer players. This is not the case for competitive. The Pres income is far too fast. On 4 nodes, it takes a player about 10:30-11:00 minutes to get to onos. That is ridiculous. There are various options you have here. And to be honest, a more radical approach may be the best scenario to balance this mod out

As much as I want to just reduce pres income across the board to what it used to be, I believe this would be the bland approach. It would fix the issue at hand, but what we will get is a stale game that we've all seen time and time again.

This next suggestion will be controversial but I believe it will change the game dynamically in a better way for comp play.

Add in res for kill.

This would totally rebalance the game to something no one can really understand unless we do many play tests. Something I'm willing to do. I don't really want to write a giant post, but I have to get this across. If we added in RFK, it would make people want to get kills. Actually engage more. Make this game more PvP based instead of PvE based. We have a chance here to actually make this game what WE want to make it. And as a competitive player killing stationary targets all game is boring. I'd rather be rewarded with big plays from stopping the opposing team during an engagement. This RFK system obviously is not thought out thoroughly, but that shouldn't be a problem if I can get on board with this mod and playtest it. Timings would be all over the place at first until we figure out how this should be balanced.

TL;DR: Change Pres income across the board. Maybe with RFK. Needs stress testing. Or do boring, bland way and revert to old pres income. Timing is still too fast as it is now.

Focus:

This upgrade seems to be the bane of many players. I believe it is still needed. What I suggested was to nerf this upgrade for skulks. Keep it the same for fades/lerks/onos/gorge. You may need to tweak the damage here and there, but not much...maybe a 5-10% damage decrease.

The only reason I don't want skulks to get full focus potential is because of the hit reg. Shotguns are so random sometimes, you can't always one shot a skulk when you know for sure you landed a dead center shot. This is the ONLY reason why skulks need a nerfed focus approach.

Vampirism: lol..who cares? Tinker with this upgrade if you want...it is vastly under powered compared to focus...

Marines:

Sprint - It got nerfed? WHY? Fix plx

Medpacks - Bring back old medpacks...no reason for new version. Once again, an UWE fix to help new players and be more forgiving...not needed in comp.



That's all I got for now...I'm sure more to follow once I see other posts. Enjoy raging

Has there been any discussion yet on movementspeed? A lot of people were talking before about reducing marine spring or remove it, and then increase basespeed for marines. I don't know what to suggest there but, I think Wob(?) has been advocating for increasing skulk sneak speed.

Tyrwing says

Has there been any discussion yet on movementspeed? A lot of people were talking before about reducing marine spring or remove it, and then increase basespeed for marines. I don't know what to suggest there but, I think Wob(?) has been advocating for increasing skulk sneak speed.

Hmm i have no problem with the basespeed of marines. skulks are fine too. imo there is nothing that should be changed

schu says

Add in res for kill.

This would totally rebalance the game to something no one can really understand unless we do many play tests. Something I'm willing to do. I don't really want to write a giant post, but I have to get this across. If we added in RFK, it would make people want to get kills. Actually engage more. Make this game more PvP based instead of PvE based. We have a chance here to actually make this game what WE want to make it. And as a competitive player killing stationary targets all game is boring. I'd rather be rewarded with big plays from stopping the opposing team during an engagement. This RFK system obviously is not thought out thoroughly, but that shouldn't be a problem if I can get on board with this mod and playtest it. Timings would be all over the place at first until we figure out how this should be balanced.

glad to hear that not the whole team of lucky chams is following the OW call.

the idea of res for kill is interesting. but imo it could destroy the whole concept of ns2. ns1 was born as a res-game. res is the key to win. so no matter how bad your team is if you get your economy straight you win.

that is the difference to other games like cod, ow, battlefield. in cod all you have to do is running around like an idiot and searching for enemys to kill. thats all.
killing lifeforms should be the "road" to succes and not the succes itself.

Tyrwing says

Has there been any discussion yet on movementspeed? A lot of people were talking before about reducing marine spring or remove it, and then increase basespeed for marines. I don't know what to suggest there but, I think Wob(?) has been advocating for increasing skulk sneak speed.

Perhaps we can get Wob or someone to comment on this. Provide reason(s) why this should be added?

As of right now, the main goal is to limit what we feel are the op'd stuff in the vanilla game so it works better for comp. We might make additional changes that make the game better as well, but we want to limit the changes to what we feel like are necessary.

Changing the game to a res for kill game is a huge thing and probably not something that will be tried at this time. It might not be the most fun when you're biting a stationary target, but it's a team game and a res game. I would be open to ideas that make the gameplay better, but the res for kill idea is just a huge idea that I think is too much to ask the community to try. It also would be much different from the vanilla game, which we don't need.

I would be open to ideas on pve and how to limit it, if it's an issue with the current game. It would have to be simple fixes though, and you would have to show how it makes the gameplay better while also keeping the game as we know it in tact.

Rammler says

killing lifeforms should be the "road" to succes and not the succes itself.

That's the thing imo.

One of the most important gameplay features of the game is that killing players is zero direct advantage, but more like a "soft" advantage. Making kills a hard coded win option is what would destroy a very interesting part of the gameplay.

Deckard says

I would be open to ideas on pve and how to limit it, if it's an issue with the current game. It would have to be simple fixes though, and you would have to show how it makes the gameplay better while also keeping the game as we know it in tact.

I dont think pve is an issue in the current game. It seems alot of people are bringing up the issue of "less pve, more pvp" but ofc they only mean alien pve, which is bullshit. It's a very bad idea to remove buildings that help give aliens map control simply because marines dont enjoy shooting them, they're supposed to not enjoy dealing with them. We already buffed flamethrowers to do twice as much damage against armor, and more structure damage. The amount of "pvp vs. pve" in the game is a complete non-issue.

Starcetereus says

Deckard says

I would be open to ideas on pve and how to limit it, if it's an issue with the current game. It would have to be simple fixes though, and you would have to show how it makes the gameplay better while also keeping the game as we know it in tact.

I dont think pve is an issue in the current game. It seems alot of people are bringing up the issue of "less pve, more pvp" but ofc they only mean alien pve, which is bullshit. It's a very bad idea to remove buildings that help give aliens map control simply because marines dont enjoy shooting them, they're supposed to not enjoy dealing with them. We already buffed flamethrowers to do twice as much damage against armor, and more structure damage. The amount of "pvp vs. pve" in the game is a complete non-issue.

Yeah, the only way we are going to change the pve is if people give examples on how it's worse for gameplay or it's very clear after playing gathers/testing that something needs to be changed. The idea is to not change things unless it's necessary or clear it would make the game better. As I've heard recently, if it ain't broke...

Deckard says

As I've heard recently, if it ain't broke...

This isn't necessarily a good mantra when you're considering that the people who made changes "breaking the game" don't have a good idea how to even play at a higher level. They don't have the intuition to create a sweeping change that the competitive community might.

At this point, competitive NS is safer being affected as little as possible by new builds, which I'm sure requires a lot of work on someone's part to work around poor implementations by the devs.

I'm a firm believer that a game balanced around competitive will be very playable in public games with only minor tweaks to numbers, but I'm sure balancing the other way around doesn't work for competitive games as often. When you balance the intricacies of the game for competitive play, you can basically skirt around the public balance without breaking anything.

For instance: Will giving aliens and marines both extra movement speed to increase the game pace really affect a public match where no ones all that good or smurfing? I don't think so. But it can make the competitive game completely different, possibly in a very satisfying way.

Unless we're balancing for smurfs and hard carries, in which case this might as well be league of legends.

ive said it before, cysts in vanilla are beyond OP.

Reducing cyst HP around the board is plain stupid. You want a marine to decyst half your hive room?
Lets account for the lesser skills teams also, even in a comp mod.

Make cyst HP linked to distance from hive again. THAT worked just fine.


Cysts in combo with myst is beyond OP.. Cysts do not die. Cysts mature (and thus add health and spread infestation faster) with myst. Myst can be dropped anywhere.
Ive used the cyst OPness so much already.. its just OP.

DCDarkling says

ive said it before, cysts in vanilla are beyond OP.

Reducing cyst HP around the board is plain stupid. You want a marine to decyst half your hive room?
Lets account for the lesser skills teams also, even in a comp mod.

Make cyst HP linked to distance from hive again. THAT worked just fine.


Cysts in combo with myst is beyond OP.. Cysts do not die. Cysts mature (and thus add health and spread infestation faster) with myst. Myst can be dropped anywhere.
Ive used the cyst OPness so much already.. its just OP.

Have you looked at the comp mod in the workshop? We already removed the part where mist stops structures from taking damage off infestation. We did reduce the cyst hp across the board. This is a testing stage. The idea is, it's less annoying for marines to shoot cysts. Also, the cysts compared to the old comp mod spread infestation faster. I'm also not sure if the cysts break slower or faster than the old comp mod when the chain breaks, but doesn't seem fast. So it may work for balance or we may have to increase the cyst hp. I think it's worth trying.

I did mention it specific as you a flat hp decrease is a bad idea.
The old mod had a gradual decrease depending on hive distance. THAT makes sense.

Flat out reducing cyst hp across the board makes deep alien cyst chains much more vulnerable while we also reduced the options to keep such chains alive.
I am arguing we pick a option which worked, instead coming up with a new one which brings its own whole list of problems.

^ do you still think the cysts are bad after playing some 6v6? Let's keep discussion about this in the nsl mod thread on the top of the page. I wanted to make sure you felt like you could respond about it in that thread.

cysts are fine :)

delete this pleas ehtank you

cysts are in a good spot. cysts not dying basically made commanding easier and made marine solo pressures really dumb and bad and a waste of time. also echo-ing was broken with cysts that do not die because id just cyst the whole side of the map on jambi, have my skulks bite down the rgith side while marines hold oxy and i could just echo 2-3 rts


let's start the discussion about hive abilities (bilebomb/leap/umbra/metabolize/stomp) and how they stay active after aliens lose a hive containing the biomass required for these abilities to function.



@@@@@@@


umbra as hive1 aliens can stomp jetpack pressures or marine walk ins, this would give aliens like 3-4 minutes to recover and get lifeforms back making any hive pressure without arcs pointless.

fades in a crag meta upgrading regeneration (WHICH WORKS IN COMBAT) and having ADVANCED METAB coupled with the increased fade base speed is borderline broken if you involve a gorge/crag/hive to heal the fade.

essentially with 2 of these fades the marines will have approximately 2 seconds (my estimate) to weld each other. and when people dont even know when their teammates take damage half the time, this would really make that "SoLo CaRRy YoLO" Fade impossible to kill in lower divisions

phonee says

fades in a crag meta upgrading regeneration (WHICH WORKS IN COMBAT) and having ADVANCED METAB coupled with the increased fade base speed is borderline broken if you involve a gorge/crag/hive to heal the fade.

essentially with 2 of these fades the marines will have approximately 2 seconds (my estimate) to weld each other. and when people dont even know when their teammates take damage half the time, this would really make that "SoLo CaRRy YoLO" Fade impossible to kill in lower divisions

Phone doesn't even fade, please don't take his opinion on fades seriously. :kaaba

heal cap's supposed to find its way into vanilla, regen was being wored on to NOT WORK DURING COMBAT
what happened with this @deck?

BauerJankins says

heal cap's supposed to find its way into vanilla, regen was being wored on to NOT WORK DURING COMBAT
what happened with this @deck?

I would not count on vanilla having a heal cap any time soon, that is very low priority and not being worked on currently as far as I know.

heal cap is already in comp mod and yea, I was told it was low priority for vanilla so we made the change to comp mod. Regarding regen in fights, we tried to remove it but it caused issues where you couldn't regen doing other things. I agree it probably should be taken out of the game, I know some people wanted it though. I will look into if we can find a fix for that. The next priority is getting the abilities to be removed once you go under required biomass.

Can we do something about rounds going past 25 minutes?

Hardcapping fades to 2 and giving them structure damage would go a long way. At least give them full damage against fucking turrets

Frozen says

Can we do something about rounds going past 25 minutes?

Hardcapping fades to 2 and giving them structure damage would go a long way. At least give them full damage against fucking turrets

Yea let's make a round automatically end at min 25. Or better at minute 15. Or 10. Nobody likes long games.

Frozen says

Can we do something about rounds going past 25 minutes?

Hardcapping fades to 2 and giving them structure damage would go a long way. At least give them full damage against fucking turrets

dont try to take what happens in gathers where i get away with building sentries and 3 armories in a room transfer over to what you think the overall balance changes shoudl be in this game please

Frozen says

Can we do something about rounds going past 25 minutes?

Hardcapping fades to 2 and giving them structure damage would go a long way. At least give them full damage against fucking turrets

lol & lol

That only made me make a post. When trying to solve the fade ball they had two choices. Nerf stucture damage or limit fades.

At least with a fade limit you can actually balance them to not be shit at high-level.

Locking thread, use the sticky thread above to discuss the current comp mod.