Please use this thread to post your thoughts on beta comp mod. This way we can get a sense how it can be improved and/or what direction the community would like comp mod to go. Thank you.

I'll start with the most obvious stuff people have been telling me in/out of game.

-Bite range feels now too short fort alot of players.
I'm against the vanilla one wich is a pathetic bandaid on uwe's "reg" problem. Making the game less skilled for skulks and boring for marines too since you cannot dodge this full of shit cone.
A middle ground can be found (slightly longer bite range)

-Skulks are too slow.
I personaly don't want skulks to be too fast, making the game all about those babblered straight line rush engagements isn't ns2 for me. Skulks should abuse ambushes / good positions and deserve to go through lanes by teamplaying / outwitting the laners not by being uncatchable.
Making the skulk too fast removes the incentive to go shift hive too.
Again we can try a slightly faster skulk.

-No regs, I couldn't kill that skulk cuz X.
Nah bruh you just can't aim / need to train your aim. I have been playing this game for a long time and those no regs were never game breaking. 90% of the time people just miss the skulk by a few mm and not all pellets hit it. end.
Hitboxes are in a much better position now IMO, no more +30% on every single rine.
That garbage bandaid by UWE is a joke again, akin to the tank meta in overwatch: who gets closer the fastest / who hits more wins. Thats not ns2.
We could try slghtly larger hitboxes for kinda broken model spots but overall I'm against it and it's probably hard to do.

After playing it a couple of rounds I think skulk speed and hitbox sizes are fine.

I don't rly experience the no reg thing people are talking about but I assume this happens more with high ping players and incresing the range a bit (for bites) might help here.

The old medpacks make it rly hard for aliens to kill marines when marines have 5+ RTs so aliens need alot more teamwork and res orientated play than they used to have. Not sure if this is a balance issue atm or aliens not having adjusted yet.

According to star the medpacks can be dealt with by disabling the snap to the marine that has been introduced some time ago but I am not sure myself if this is easily revertable. I heard that the snap to marine always was there and that the only thing that changed was the ghost medpack for commanders showing accurately how it will snap to the marine.

Otherwise I like how dodging is a thing again for aliens. Feels like the game is more difficult for both sides now which is increasing the skill ceiling which is a nice thing to have.

I agree about bite cones needing a little more range, but not like vanilla. Most of us are used to vanilla bite cones atm (and that probably wont change since people still pub) and I think this is contributing to biting too early in fights, but I also feel like watching things in real time you miss a lot of bites that should otherwise hit. With Marines having the added buff of medpack spam, I don't think it's egregious to give skulks a small amount of more range with biting.

Lerks feel really hard to hit on high ping also. Two things in this clip: Zero damage on second shot w/ w3 shot on Lerk. Also my clip goes from 4 to 2 in 1 shot. And I mean if we're gonna say the wings shouldn't take damage, or minimum damage, to me this is akin to fades clipping through the ceiling.

Does anyone have a list of the changes? I cant find any.

DCDarkling says

Does anyone have a list of the changes? I cant find any.

List of beta mod changes from normal comp mod:

1) remove parasite effect from webs
2) jetpack cost reduced to 15 pres/tres
3) medpacks reverted to instant heal 50 hp with current pickup/drop rates
4) change to the new vanilla egg spawning mechanic ("Every hive spawns an egg every 13 secs instead of only one hive at a time. Every hive can spawn up to 2 eggs (was 3).")
5) clog hp reduced to 180
6) Machine Gun cost change to vanilla value of 20.
7) Babbler change: remove damage taken cap and make their hp 11
8) Revert hitboxes - this is to change hitboxes for lerk and skulk to before uwe changed them( fade hitbox is already old hitbox in normal comp mod)
9) Revert bite cones - changes for skulk and fade, changing to before uwe change
10) Revert shotgun spread - old sg spread from season 9 before change by uwe
11) Revert movement changes - changing movement of skulk and lerk from before build 307.

I haven't tested if each of these above changes are in beta mod and/or working correctly yet.

DCDarkling says

Does anyone have a list of the changes? I cant find any.

https://github.com/Steelcap/NSL-CompMod/blob/beta/README.md

It says that webs don't parasite; there is a small (really quite miniscule) bug with that atm, will be fixed soonTM.
Notice there is no mention of bite distance, because that was NOT changed, at least intentionally. There's always the possibility of the game doing something I don't understand. If you want me to believe that the bite distance has changed, I'm gonna need some more evidence.

The following items we are looking into changing, but are currently not in the beta mod:

-Commander change , remove additional medpack auto snap so meds snap at same distance as ammo/catpacks - *update* - this may be already changed in beta mod. Still trying to verify.

-*updated*Silence change, have all primary attacks make sound. This is for example: bite, lerkbite, swipe, spit. Even if you miss or hit a structure, it would make a sound.

loMe says

Also my clip goes from 4 to 2 in 1 shot.

i've noticed strange things with the sniper rifleshotgun like this too. hard to describe without recordings, but sometimes i will shoot after/while it's reloading and nothing happens, almost as if the animations fall out of sync.

Updated List (I think) of what is in the beta mod currently that is different from normal comp mod:

1) Removed parasite effect from webs
2) Jetpack cost reduced to 15 pres/tres
3) Medpacks reverted to instant heal 50 hp with current pickup/drop rates
4) Change to the new vanilla egg spawning mechanic ("Every hive spawns an egg every 13 secs instead of only one hive at a time. Every hive can spawn up to 2 eggs (was 3).")
5) Clog hp reduced to 180
6) Machine Gun cost changed to vanilla value of 20.
7) Babbler change: remove damage taken cap and make their hp 11
8) Revert hitboxes - changed hitboxes for lerk and skulk to before uwe changed them (fade hitbox is already old hitbox in normal comp mod)
9) Revert bite/swipe cones - changes to skulk and fade, changed to bite/swipe cone before UWE changed them
10) Revert shotgun spread - old sg spread, same as season 9, before change by UWE
11) Revert movement changes - changed movement of skulk and lerk to before build 307.
12) Marine commander change , removed additional medpack auto snap so meds snap at same distance as ammo/catpacks.
13) Silence change, all primary attacks make sound. This is for example: bite, lerkbite, swipe, spit. Even if you miss or hit a structure, it will make a sound.

Beta comp mod changes are planned to be put into regular comp mod soon. Please share any thoughts you have on the beta mod or if you have any concerns having it be changed to regular comp mod. Thank you.

Give skulks 15 hp more and nerf medspam slightly.

Aliens are losing a lot in gathers. The NA Gather server claims 80% marine wins since Beta has gone live. This is only tracking competitive game play and this is the W/L ratio.
*The bite cone is smaller
*bite distance shorter (this has massive effects with pings (NA vs Euro)),
*Instant Med heals (even if you land all your bites you
*Dodging is very effect now
*Alien hitbox is smaller now (this has NOT been tested) and people are shooting still really well. Bigger hit boxes are from when hit reg was very bad.
Aliens need some type of buff or marine nerfs.

The most stale gameplay element from last season was the 2/2sg 4 man deathballs. Instant heal medpacks seem to make the problem worse. You just don't have the coordination in the typical gather to repel a well supported hive push.

*cough* two hives spores *cough*

Egglocking is too easy. If 5 skulks get cleared and 1 marine is near the hive, gg. Happens a lot now that all Marines hit 30% and medspam is so powerful.

Spores is really lame in my opinion. It's a huge AoE attack, requiring no skill, that can be used safely from a distance combined with spikes. It can single-handedly repel a hive/nano push. It should be kept Hive 3 if anywhere at all in competitive. I also wouldn't mess with skulk beginning hp, b/c it would throw off damage numbers people are used to, but I think early game aliens could use a tweak, we've been saying this for a while tho cuz medpack spam is pretty op early game.

Yea I like the instant meds against lifeforms because you feel like every marine has a chance to do serious damage even with multiple lifeforms in the room. The issue is potentially (I haven't played enough of beta) , that med spam with the skulk decrease in speed makes it really difficult for aliens to clear early marines or marines with sgs fast enough to bite rts. If aliens can't bite res, game is a boring laning game or a marine stomp. If something was going to be changed, I would prefer to keep the meds similar since the threat of the lifeforms dying in every fight is one of the best parts of ns2.

So how can we do that and help aliens? Also I agree with lome on spores. Spores just don't feel skillful enough and take the fun out of the game imo. Like silence.

I think the things that would help aliens but not make the game feel like you can't dodge as marine or make an impact: keep the meds as instant 50 hp heals, possibly change skulk speed, and possibly increase spread of sg to somewhere between the vanilla sg spread and beta sg spread. Once you increase sg spread, fades can breathe easier. Also skulks can get away from a sg easier to bite rt's, sg has to switch to a pistol more. I also don't think we should touch the bite/swipe cones unless there are legit no regs happening. I feel like the old bite cone/hit cone goes along with the old hitboxes where you have to hit the target.

There was also talk on people having to go shift hive possibly to offset the descrease in skulk speed. Perhaps we can have more alien teams going shift hive early, and letting us know if the celerity early game is helping skulks clear marines faster. It seems like a lot of people went shift with the old skulk speed, if I remember correctly. So we want to hear all feedback on beta comp mod. I would also like to know what ideas people have to keep the game skill based, have to hit what you're aiming at, but also help aliens IF they need help.

~

loMe says

Spores is really lame in my opinion. It's a huge AoE attack, requiring no skill, that can be used safely from a distance combined with spikes. It can single-handedly repel a hive/nano push.

Yeah yeah I've heard it all before. For what it's worth, I'd want to reduce the range significantly, so lerks would be forced to use it sparingly on a group of marines and put themselves at risk in doing so. The idea would be that the lerk would use this to split up the group right before the aliens attack - rather than as a constant bombardment from distance.

But even if you don't like this - in my opinion the weakness of the current meta is the strength of the marine deathball, not alien early game. Sure, sometimes marines stomp on aliens and egglock them early, but that's usually because of aliens being stupid. In most games I've played, the aliens do fine early game, but marines manage to sit on barely enough res to tech up. Then deathball arrives, aliens can't manage the teamwork to beat it, and it's gg.

Hobbeson says

Then deathball arrives, aliens can't manage the teamwork to beat it, and it's gg.

What I understand you are saying is, you think potentially aliens are able to beat it but the lack of skill makes them lose. This is not a valid reason to change balance, it is the same reasoning UWE uses when implementing new questionable changes (give Onos OP boneshield because rookies run into 5 marines and die all the time).

Home says

Hobbeson says

Then deathball arrives, aliens can't manage the teamwork to beat it, and it's gg.

What I understand you are saying is, you think potentially aliens are able to beat it but the lack of skill makes them lose. This is not a valid reason to change balance, it is the same reasoning UWE uses when implementing new questionable changes (give Onos OP boneshield because rookies run into 5 marines and die all the time).

I hear people saying this sort of thing pretty often, and I don't think it's correct. Look, even with the most OP game mechanics it'll be possible for the other team to overcome the disadvantage with enough skill. Realistically, in an unbalanced game you'll see something like a 60% winrate - and so you'll have *plenty* of wins by the weaker side. So long as you have *equally skilled* players on both sides, and one side wins 60% of the time, you have an unbalanced situation. In other words, it's unbalanced if the aliens require a skill advantage in order to win.

That being said, my guess is that what's relevant here isn't skill so much skill as teamwork - aliens need more of it, or they get rolled. And maybe that's okay. I don't think we'll be able to judge until we see some actual teams play with the beta, rather than disorganized gatherers.

Hobbeson says

In other words, it's unbalanced if the aliens require a skill advantage in order to win.

I agree.

I don't think we'll be able to judge until we see some actual teams play with the beta, rather than disorganized gatherers.

I agree here aswell, and you would also give some time for players and teams to adjust and find ways to play against it.

Home says

Hobbeson says

In other words, it's unbalanced if the aliens require a skill advantage in order to win.

I agree.

I don't think we'll be able to judge until we see some actual teams play with the beta, rather than disorganized gatherers.

I agree here aswell, and you would also give some time for players and teams to adjust and find ways to play against it.

Yeah we need more testing, and high level games with organized alien play to know if it's balanced or not. Please get those games going. Also, just curious what hive on aliens people have being going first?
Also, what are your thoughts on which first and second hive is being the most effective right now?

Are we collecting data on gathers and scrims using the beta? If so, could I have access to that?

Hobbeson says

Are we collecting data on gathers and scrims using the beta? If so, could I have access to that?

This is where hopefully mephilles brings us some info.

HMG should get somekind of buff atm its only lmg/sg on marine gameplay no other real option. Could increased the hmg dmg by 1 for example.

the only problem with hmg is that people dont use it and that's all... you could try for a temporary buff like we did with catpacks before this season where we buffed them so people started using them a shitton. but i think most people weren't really happy about that
it's a (not even that situational) weapon mostly for onos but could also be useful outside of onos fights if you just try it

BauerJankins says

the only problem with hmg is that people dont use it and that's all... you could try for a temporary buff like we did with catpacks before this season where we buffed them so people started using them a shitton. but i think most people weren't really happy about that
it's a (not even that situational) weapon mostly for onos but could also be useful outside of onos fights if you just try it

Yea, has anyone tried it much in the beta mod with the new meds? Could be pretty good.

Deck says

Hobbeson says

Are we collecting data on gathers and scrims using the beta? If so, could I have access to that?

This is where hopefully mephilles brings us some info.

Just tell me what kind of info you want and I'll do my best to provide it.

Mephilles says

Deck says

Hobbeson says

Are we collecting data on gathers and scrims using the beta? If so, could I have access to that?

This is where hopefully mephilles brings us some info.

Just tell me what kind of info you want and I'll do my best to provide it.

Short answer is, the more the better, but I don't want to take up too much of your time.

Basic stats, for each round, would be map, winning side, duration. If you could get more fine grained details, like tech path, kills, rts destroyed, average aim, etc, that could be fun to play with. But I'm guessing you don't have access to all that.