Author Topic: Beta 6 changelog  (Read 17796 times)

December 18, 2004, 08:31:53 AM
Reply #40

Decimator

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Well, even if it is overpowered, it just might be the thing to break dms.  It is so ingrained in people's minds that it may take overpowered sensories to break it.
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December 18, 2004, 11:22:28 AM
Reply #41

Necrosis

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Yeah tbh I think the shake up alone will make more people EXPERIMENT with SC first strats.

It'll be interesting to see more variations on chamber order, as opposed to something mundane like x-MC-y over and over.
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December 18, 2004, 12:08:42 PM
Reply #42

TheAdj

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Free ups make all the chambers viable for skulks to use, unlike b5 to where it's a double edged sword (and whoever asked gestation time on ups is a bit lower, not sure the exact time but I want to say 3 seconds).  John I understand the concern and I think initially marines will get ownerized, but I think after a month or two they'll adapt and start to do fine (or if there is an obvious concern it'll be addressed with a marine buff, probably on the Obs if I have my way with it).  That's why open consti testing will happen, I plan to contribute as much as possible to it and see how it works out.  If you're not a consti I highly suggest saving up 20 bucks and paypal'ing it to Charlie, it really does literally pay the bills most of the time, and you'll get to have your ass handed to you by yours truly in the consti beta :p

December 18, 2004, 03:36:07 PM
Reply #43

BobTheJanitor

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and you'll get to have your ass handed to you by yours truly in the consti beta :p
Once they finish coding in the 'auto-ban Adj when he goes lerk' that I've been pushing for, I'm sure we'll be fine.  :D

To all the nay-sayers: just try it out for a while before you decide the game is broken. MC and SC first still have their weaknesses. (sup 2nd hive lockdown?) And getting an obs up in an important area overrides any SCs that might be hiding there. And if you have just two marines, one ping is enough to uncloak the aliens while you build. 30% cloaked is still quite visible, and once you put one bullet in them they become fully visible.

And the free upgrades just make things feel so much more interesting. It finally fixes the old problem of marines having to research once and then getting upgrades forever, whereas aliens have to keep wasting res to reup with each spawn. There's never a reason not to upgrade except when you've got marines standing in the hive. It adds a new level of fun on both sides.

The PT time has been limited, but it's getting back into full swing finally. I look forward to b6 fun on LM, hopefully it's not too far off.

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there are a lot of aaaa...mmmmm.... "HAPPY" pirates on this ship. -GrayDuck

December 18, 2004, 04:11:20 PM
Reply #44

TheAdj

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Aye, puzl said he was adding that feature in build13 bob.

December 19, 2004, 01:23:47 PM
Reply #45

2_of_8

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One thing I'm most looking forward to is the new cloak system. Right now, one wrong move - such as side-stepping and moving forward - and you're uncloaked. With this system, you can quickly correct your small mistake.
I'm wondering, though, how will you know your level of... cloakiness? Maybe a meter or something?
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December 19, 2004, 01:27:03 PM
Reply #46

LowCrawler

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One thing I'm most looking forward to is the new cloak system. Right now, one wrong move - such as side-stepping and moving forward - and you're uncloaked. With this system, you can quickly correct your small mistake.
I'm wondering, though, how will you know your level of... cloakiness? Maybe a meter or something?
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hmm thats an excellent question...

and ill say it once more.


BAH no more knife juggle teh oni.

December 19, 2004, 11:27:45 PM
Reply #47

EmperorPenguin

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I'm certainly anticipating this new release, and it does look like things are going to change a great deal.  I'm really looking forward to all the new strategies that will come out of B6, and what new preferences appear on the server.

It looks like sens will be more popular, but I'm hoping that there won't be a dominant pattern, like the current MDS.  I know that sometimes we change this, but really only to mix things up it seems.  I hope that instead of one concrete order we actually see some versatility, at least in chamber strategy.
"What is it that makes a complete stranger dive into an icy river to save a solid gold baby?  Maybe we'll never know."

December 20, 2004, 11:56:34 PM
Reply #48

SwiftSpear

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And thats why I'm asking, whats the boost for? Its already an amazingly powerful chamber, as is MC. Free upgrades seems sensible and fun, but 2% regen per tick, the 30% visibility at any speed, siegenerf and SoF-effect for SC is a bit over the top unless marines start shooting deathrays out their eyes.

Haha X-S-Z I told you there will be alot of these Marine Lovers.

Now to explain "why".

First off Marines have it as easy as it can get in b5. You will, repeat WILL kill at least 2-5 skulks before you die. Your shotguns own everything and cost a mere 10 res. You lack teamwork in some games yet still dominate the field unless Aliens use a helluv alot of teamwork which doesn't make much sense at all.

the 2% regen is to encourage other chambers besides DC's. the Sensory "boost" is for encouraging SC first.

Now you Marines will have something else comming your way when you expect to go and start "0Wnz0R1nG" Skulks, NS is going to become more of a "fun" game rather than a "Hey Pa, gimme dat shotty and we can g0 huntin' skulks n Gorgies YEEE HAWWW"
Every build since 2.1 has benefitted the Marines all the way. Now it's time for the Aliens to shine and stand a chance in most PUB games >:D
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I agree with you compleatly, NS has been biased against skulks for a while now.  But to say NS has been biased against aliens is a slight, fades carry the alien team, not skulks.  I love these modifications, but I think at some point the general alien buffs need to come with some kind of nerf to the high skill fade.
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December 23, 2004, 01:51:55 PM
Reply #49

Kodiac

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Sweet!

Hours of fun!!!

Suitably Excited statement!!

ARR!

Seriously, these changes will be..........interesting.... to play with.   Maybe somebody will let me get ym sens first........
Kodiac teh Pirate Bear
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December 23, 2004, 03:34:09 PM
Reply #50

Nikon

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the field obs just became MORE important.
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December 23, 2004, 11:43:59 PM
Reply #51

JohnTheGarbageman

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And thats why I'm asking, whats the boost for? Its already an amazingly powerful chamber, as is MC. Free upgrades seems sensible and fun, but 2% regen per tick, the 30% visibility at any speed, siegenerf and SoF-effect for SC is a bit over the top unless marines start shooting deathrays out their eyes.

Haha X-S-Z I told you there will be alot of these Marine Lovers.

Now to explain "why".

First off Marines have it as easy as it can get in b5. You will, repeat WILL kill at least 2-5 skulks before you die. Your shotguns own everything and cost a mere 10 res. You lack teamwork in some games yet still dominate the field unless Aliens use a helluv alot of teamwork which doesn't make much sense at all.

the 2% regen is to encourage other chambers besides DC's. the Sensory "boost" is for encouraging SC first.

Now you Marines will have something else comming your way when you expect to go and start "0Wnz0R1nG" Skulks, NS is going to become more of a "fun" game rather than a "Hey Pa, gimme dat shotty and we can g0 huntin' skulks n Gorgies YEEE HAWWW"
Every build since 2.1 has benefitted the Marines all the way. Now it's time for the Aliens to shine and stand a chance in most PUB games >:D
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I agree with you compleatly, NS has been biased against skulks for a while now.  But to say NS has been biased against aliens is a slight, fades carry the alien team, not skulks.  I love these modifications, but I think at some point the general alien buffs need to come with some kind of nerf to the high skill fade.
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Only DC skulks do really suck to a significant degree, and they still only fight a slight uphill battle for between 2 and 6 minutes (depending on wether you get earlylerks, fades and/or lose nodes in under 90 seconds). Nobody is forcing people to use the weakest chamber, thats their choice to make.

Complaining that the alternatives to defense chambers required "too much teamwork" is the worst argument I've seen to date. One of the cornerstones of NS gameplay is team-reliance anyway - sure thats one of the reasons its tough to run an NS pub, but switching the problem over from one side to another isn't going to be much of a drastic improvement. However competitive balance is fairly nice right now, if not a tad alien-biased especially towards midgame (and half these boosts are powerful midgame boosts as well).

And nerfing the Fade - he is already not a very powerful singular unit. His main roles are to create confusion and finish off stragglers or spored targets - in cases where the opposition is worth their salt. If there are no Skulks around to create confusion, and/or Lerks to create an opening for the Fade, he's worthless. This goes hand in hand with the same complaint though, that you could say it requires too much teamwork and aim to survive fades with ease - but the bit of NS that is enjoyable is these instances of "too much" teamwork, and not those of predetermined hardcounter balance (OLO NO PING SENSORY PWNS JOO, FUN++).

But I'm crazy anyway, and my team only sports a 6:1 alien-favoring tiestreak.

December 24, 2004, 04:07:30 AM
Reply #52

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To be honest I think we (PTs) should of actually tested the larger gameplay changes in a proper classic enviroment rather than playing combat for hours. What small amount of PTing we did was on a 10v10 server where everyone lagged spiked to hell and aliens won every round till we stacked teams up the wazoo.

Contary to popular belief but NS was already balanced pretty well and only a few changes were needed to balance it out entirely. A SMALL boost to sensory and a SMALL buff to the skulk. What we have in beta 6 is a MASSIVE buff. I dread playing marines in a competitive enviroment.

Lets think about it, you adjust your strat slightly to allow for chambers to be dropped at the very start and by 1:30 you have EVERY skulk, EVERY life running around with carapace, silence, cloaking or whatever. Now these upgrades are already very effective if employed correctly but now they're free. Skulks recieving this sort of early boost is going to lead to a lot more early kills and obviously more RFK going skulks way. So what does this mean? It means earliar fades, earliar hive, earliar lerk.

The sensory changes are still massively overpowering and i know in the EU testing they never lost a round apart from when me, ebnar, wltrs and a few other EU clanners were stacked on one team. These few wins were then used as justification for the changes not being unbalanced. Now a skulk bunnyhopping, depending on the marine can be an easy thing to deal with or a nightmare. 30% visibility may sound a lot but that means you're 70% invisible and frankly i don't relish the idea of having the best players in the EU charging at me when i can barely see them.

The other big change, innate regen does rock though and the bug fixes are all sweet.

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December 24, 2004, 06:23:33 AM
Reply #53

JohnTheGarbageman

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Innate regen is in itself okay, but the DC hasn't been an interesting chamber since god knows when anyway. I'd prefer an extra percent or so on Gorge heal together with the infamous "focus healspray" - that way we would skirt boosting the most powerful chamber, the MC.

And why in the world the 30% visibility thing would be necessary I don't know - cloaking is already a mighty nasty upgrade. It might even work okay earlygame, but in a midgame scenario with MC/SC its just another in a long, long string of 2 Hive advantages, along with double the spawn, teleportation, leap, bilebomb, umbra, metabolise, stomp and the armor bonus.

The only really dramatic imbalance is midgame marine balance - they're fairly pathetic, and there is about one strategy with a high rate of success, thats prototeching it up. They're already spending big to do that, together with fielding HMGs and welders, a phasegate, siege equipment and medpacks (until the appropriate prototech is available, meds cost quite a tad). Now lets have sieges do no splashdamage, and make them instantly only half as effective - sounds like a winner to me.


@Ben:
Wait, the PTs played combat and thought the aliens needed boosting? Wowzers good sirs, thats just an impressive failure of reasoning.

December 24, 2004, 10:26:20 AM
Reply #54

holy_devil

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does the new cloak upgrade counter mt while moving now? sorry if someone said that but i probably overlooked it if they did D:

also i want to be clear on this, you're 30% visible even while running? like, you'll play the footsteps and still be mostly invisible?

December 24, 2004, 10:38:27 AM
Reply #55

Malevolent

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JohnTheGarbageman is right about the aliens in combat. They win most of the time, if only because of the time limit (at its default). If you have one gorge with web, a skulk or two with xeno ,and a fade, you win. And if you have an onos, well that will just speed up the win (and none of these are hard to get).
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December 24, 2004, 10:55:54 AM
Reply #56

2_of_8

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also i want to be clear on this, you're 30% visible even while running? like, you'll play the footsteps and still be mostly invisible?
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I certainly hope not, because then, SC will be the most important chamber (not that that's a bad thing), and Marines will have no way of fighting, except to place obs at every corner or place 50 obs in base to continually scan every area.
Cloaking is dangerous, and only has one problem - it sometimes decloaks when moving sideways, or doing small jumps off little bumps in the wall or something.
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December 24, 2004, 06:07:45 PM
Reply #57

a civilian

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I haven't played beta 6, but I doubt 30% visibility would be all that difficult to see.  Current cloaking is 5% visibility, and it can usually be seen if you're paying attention.

December 24, 2004, 06:51:46 PM
Reply #58

BobTheJanitor

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30% is pretty visible. And once you know they have cloakers, you start really watching for it. I still tend to think it might be a bit off, but that's what wide scale testing is for. Most of the PT input on SC changes (just increase the radius of chamber range cloaking and make it nearly impossible to accidentally uncloak as long as walk is held) was shot down. So now we have what we have. If it ruins the game, post long threads with tons of replies on the forums (whenever they come back up) and something will probably happen.

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there are a lot of aaaa...mmmmm.... "HAPPY" pirates on this ship. -GrayDuck

December 27, 2004, 04:45:13 AM
Reply #59

SwiftSpear

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I haven't played beta 6, but I doubt 30% visibility would be all that difficult to see.  Current cloaking is 5% visibility, and it can usually be seen if you're paying attention.
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It's pretty friggin hard to catch a cloaked walker at 5%, but if they are moving at any decent speed (in sensory range) they eat lead nearly every time.  I can only imagine how visable a full speed running skulk would be even at 30%
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