Reduce Marine sprint by .25 speed

If this adds a few seconds to travel time, then it further nerfs weapon despawn rates, which were already reduced from 30 to 25 seconds. The despawn time should be readjusted to compensate.

Golden says

One of the points behind the reduced res cost for lifeforms is to allow alien teams that are winning to take risks in order to end a game faster. It got to the point where marine teams just had to wait until the fades/onos made a mistake, then they still had minutes to come back. You still have a huge window to get work done after killing a lifeform, you just have to kill the lifeform faster.

I also think that the lifeform pres changes have been a bit hard on lower divisions; it feels like killing a lifeform in a reasonably close game doesn't matter much because that player is back as the same lifeform too quickly. If the intent is to help alien teams in a winning position actually end the game, then I'd rather see lifeform prices reduced per hive.

"Remove 60s res penalty for entering command chair/hive - commanders still start with 0 pres"

This is the change I see the biggest problems with. It's not so much an issue on the marine side, but for aliens, it means the commander only won't get res while in the hive, which screws up the incentives; he won't just want to be on the field to help in engagements, but also because he's getting paid for it. The worst manifestation of this would be the commander hopping out of the hive during lulls just to get a few PRes ticks so he can be closer to affording a lifeform of some kind, and then hopping back in. Effectively, an alien player is now paying 0.1 PRes per tick per harvester to be in the hive, making commanding even less appealing, while the old model assumed that the dedicated commander would never get any res whatsoever.

This could be handled at least a little better if the starting commander simply didn't collect resources during the game at all. It is in line with the existing mechanic of denying commanders any starting resources and the spirit of the 60 second res penalty. It would still allow the musical chairs commander that this change is intended to permit, but would eliminate the bizarre incentives created by paying for a commander. The one technical issue I see with it is handling the penalty if the commander needs to be replaced mid-game, but this is solvable by making it so that if no players have the penalty, the new player gets it. It also seems unworkable for pubs, but I imagine that's not something we're really considering with all of these changes.

NS2 vanilla was crap to be honest, if we stuck to that the game would already be dead. People using the excuse of drifting away from vanilla ns2 is lolz (polite word). Yes the mods are implemented for balance (Balance for the reason its more fun to play) SG's as most people agree with come out very early. So let me look at this as a fun factor as marines first 4mins+ i play lmg ok bored of lmg gimmi something else ok sg! wooh this is cool (Wait i have to use this for the next 30mins if the game lasts that long???? ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz)

yeah, anybody complaining about comp moving away from vanilla, i don't see how that's a valid concern. i mean, what's the issue?

is it that vanilla players will have a greater barrier to getting into comp play? because i disagree. i suspect that learning how an hmg works will be the least intimidating part of getting into comp. if some pub noob wants to get decent at comp the first things they have to learn are how to move, how to shoot/bite, and how to make decisions. basically relearn the most fundamental aspects of the game. some tertiary weapons and abilities like hmgs, flamethrowers, exos, and metabolize are just footnotes.

is it that vanilla players won't be able to enjoy spectating comp play as much? because i disagree. imagine ns2 where people are buying and effectively utilizing hmgs, flamethrowers, fucking exos. it's sexy as hell! some pub noob is gonna look at that and say "why can't i phase in my exo, that's cool as shit. i gotta try this competitive mode out."

is it that it's just _not_ ns2 anymore? because it really is. can you really argue that adding an hmg makes the game less honest to the natural selection universe? or just making flamethrowers and exos viable? i mean, worst case scenario people still just don't use them.

is it that it'll further split the community? no it won't. what's the concern? that some vanilla player is gonna join a pug server, pick up an hmg and say "what is this shit? i'm out of here," and then change servers? that's ridiculous.

is it that the game just won't be as good because some amateurs are making these changes instead of UWE, the professional development studio who has spent thousands of man hours just thinking about how to make ns2 a good, streamlined game experience? because it should be. this is really the only valid concern. what if there's an elegance and simplicity in the couple of basic weapons we currently get as marines, and we just don't appreciate it currently? what if using more weapons just makes the game a cluttered mess? what if the limited set of strategies that currently play out in competitive matches are more interesting because they're based on map position and where and when you're gonna pressure instead of weapon composition of your team? what if we're actually in a sweet spot in terms of gameplay, and shifting too far away from it will destabilize the competitive community in a way that it isn't able to cope with in its weakened state? what if everybody who plays competitive starts losing interest because comp mod broke the game and it's not fun anymore? and what if there just aren't enough people left for another season of nsl? this is the only scenario i've outlined that could actually happen. and you don't want it to happen, right? so what can you do about it? what can we do about it?

give actual feedback about why the proposed changes won't work from a gameplay perspective. start playtesting the new compmod right now and see how it feels. don't worry about all this splitting the community bullshit, compmod is happening. it needs you in order to make sure it's as good as it needs to be. it needs your feedback and it needs as much as possible in order to iterate quickly enough to stay ahead of any problems which may crop up. if compmod fucks everything up and ns2 dies a lonely death, then you get the privilege of saying you told them so. but you're culpable as well, because you stood in the back just doomsaying instead of actually helping push the game in a healthy direction.

tl;dr: life is change. the best thing you can do is give constructive feedback, whether you like the idea of compmod or not. help make it as good as it can be, because it be, baby.

Dammit KMG you just had to go and write an essay didn't you! :)

So do you have any actual feedback about how the changes will affect the game?

Great job on the CompMod! It truly makes NS2 more fun to play! However, stuff can always get better. Below I'll list a couple of bugs and issues I've come across during beta testing the CompMod.

* I have a bug with the HMG. There's no sound when it is firing. I guess the sound is just missing somehow. UPDATE: After subscribing to both CompMod and NS2b on the workshop the issue fixed itself. I don't know exactly which mod fixed it but I'm guessing it was NS2b since that's the one where the HMG is included.

1. I feel the spread of the HMG is too big. At the moment I feel it's worse than the LMG unless you are in the range where a shotgun would be more suitable. I don't want the spread to be as small as the LMG as that would make the HMG overpowered.

2. Losing alien abilities when a hive goes down is too punishing. It starts a death spiral that is almost impossible for the alien team to overcome. If the issue that this change is trying to address it the umbra spamming lerk then maybe it might be better to just move umbra higher up in the tech tree (e.g. switching place with bone shield and thereby moving it to biomass 5).

3. The HP gain on biomass makes you all too powerful. I'm saying this mostly from the perspective of a fade player. I feel that it becomes too easy to get away from situations that should have killed you. I really appreciate the extra HP however and think it's a step in the right direction. Maybe halving the amount of HP gained for lerks and fades (making it 5 and 10 per biomass respectively) would be more balanced.

4. I really like the removal of the res penalty for commanders. Keep it.

5. As someone mentioned earlier. Now that the sprint speed has been lowered (good change) it is harder to recover dropped weapons. I think changing the despawn time for weapons back to 30 seconds again would be a nice way to compensate.

6. Shorter skulk upgrade time is a nice change and a good idea. Keep it.

7. The cyst changes are good.

8. Hive 3 IS supposed to be overpowered in a way. It's there to end the game. I don't really see the need for spores being on the third hive for example. The fact that stomp goes through props is somewhat compensated for by the fact that it can't traverse height differences.

There's a rather annoying phase gate bug that happened while testing on SammyG's server.

It feels like the delay time adds up so a fresh PG works fine while a PG that has been up for a considerable amount of time (ie main base PG) has a phase delay that gets into the seconds by the end of a long game, meaning one marine phase every second.

Does not appear to affect other gates that are recently dropped.

Pretty sure Dragon cranked up the phase gate delay to verify it works... something greater than a second.

joshhhy says

Pretty sure Dragon cranked up the phase gate delay to verify it works... something greater than a second.

Then it breaks, because it shouldn't differ between gates or over time, right?

SammyG says

Dammit KMG you just had to go and write an essay didn't you! :)

So do you have any actual feedback about how the changes will affect the game?

of course not :)

i actually haven't been able to play for the last week or so, i just moved to denver. all my shit is in boxes in a warehouse in california and might not get here till next week :(

and also i communicate mostly in essay form.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone, keep it coming.

The phase gate delay is currently at something like 3 seconds for testing purposes, it seems to work inconsistently.

There will continue to be bugs with the HMG as its a newly implemented item, please report any bugs to this thread so Dragon can fix them.

While I like the fact that you are intoducing the HMG, ranged spores and all the other stuff, I too worry about the comp mod getting too far away from vanilla play.

If you are aiming to try and get some pubbers/new teams to play in some tournaments here during the summer, I worry that the mod might prevent some to take the step. With the current state/direction of the mod I don't see any pub players joining. I think it's simply too different for these types of players to bother getting into it.

It might result in the competetive community not growing. If new people never join in then you only have people leaving and you end up with nothing. Sure you likely won't notice in the short-term, but you know where I'm getting at. In the long run it will likely hurt this community to play a different game than vanilla.

With the new community development team I'm wondering if the changes are planned to be incoperated into vanilla once the mod reaches a stable state or if the waters will be kept split?

Edit: I think it would be great to have alien abilities removed as soon as the required biomass is lost. The aliens have an easier time getting comebacks compared to marines, this could even it out a bit.

Here's where the mod currently stands:

We'd like to get more scrims/organized games on it (after the current season is over we should get to see more games on it). After we've all played it enough, we'll have a community meeting to discuss what direction we think it should go in. What we like, what we don't like, etc.

Currently there's 3 camps if you will, the crowd that likes the changes, the crowd that is unsure of but ultimately doesn't mind the changes, and the crowd that thinks there are too many changes. This is also something that will need to be discussed because there is no right or wrong there, but what direction does the community collectively want to go in (to adopt iteration 3 or not).

I would ask to keep on giving constructive feedback where possible about the changes and the gameplay in iteration 3, and keep an eye out for that community meeting (I'll try and get zef to make a front page post about it when it's scheduled). This wont be until a week or three after the conclusion of season 4.

edit: also I wouldn't hold your breath about compmod changes being adopted into vanilla

I would personally like for hives to heal drifters.

Edit: (Bug report) Cancelling research will not return resources. Also stomp is doing ridiculous damage (up to 250) in some occasions.

whats the latest with biomass in this version? We pugged 2 weeks straight every night on v3 and havn't touched it since due to op regen + op biomass + muccous + crag heal/hive heal in any given combination = unkillable aliens.

Also don't discredit the fact that we were only pugging on it (our teams are taking a break between seasons) - I imagine it to be worse in a team environment where it will be abused even more.

Other changes that didn't work - the flamethrower. We liked the idea behind the change, but its still shit. The range on it is absolutely useless. you literally need to be hugging an upgrade or target, and even then the dmg output still feels a little low. In almost all cases having an lmg or sg (or even pistol) was more useful. Would suggest to either increase range, or keep the range as is but increase the dmg.

HMG - hit and miss - needed more testing time, impossible to tell if it has impact or not for the right part of the game due to the biomass/heal issues above. Needs further testing. Still feel the role of the exo and HMG overlaps too much though. Not sure what having both in the game achieves.

No hive res penalty - seemed to work fine, same with the loss of alien evo abilities on hive loss, but will need further testing to see long term meta viability.

v2 is much more stable and enjoyable than the current iteration of v3. Could you scale the biomass back to it's original values or scale down the obscene amounts of healing options so that these other good changes in v3 can be played and tested properly?

cheers

btw...what about motion tracking?...move silence to shift hive ability? like ns1?

How does the HMG damage scale with upgrades exactly?

I'm assuming 15/16/17/18.

Can anyone confirm?

PandaClaws says

How does the HMG damage scale with upgrades exactly?

I'm assuming 15/16/17/18.

Can anyone confirm?

The game rounds up in the damage numbers you get with draw damage, but the actual numbers are: 15--> 16.5-->18-->19.5

There are 2 new updates today (you can also see them in the doc - the latter won't go live until probably later this evening):

-Flamethrower: Doubled the fire rate, reduced damage from 15 → 10 (This should almost double the damage), Reduced hit cone from 0.17 → 0.1, removed 3 energy damage- players instead regenerate 50% energy while on fire, fire now only destroys Umbra. (Still provides a 50% heal reduction to burning enemy players) [Burning debuff lasts for 5 seconds]

-Healing no longer scales with biomass (you'll get healed for your base amount regardless of how much biomass you have - in other words a biomass 9 fade will get the same healing amount from crags, gorge, and hive healing as a biomass 1 fade would). Regen upgrade will remain unchanged in this respect because it did not scale previously.


We're looking for feedback in specific about the new marine weapons (HMG, FT, Exo) and about alien healing/survivability (biomass in particular).

We're still looking to get more organized games played on this so that the changes can be evaluated in a more in depth manner. Thank you to those that have already provided feeback and have played on the mod- keep it up!

Also dragon has pulled a rabbit out of his hat and added Ice's model in for the HMG! :)

No reload&switch sound for HMG. Nice to see it ingame at last :)

After playing some ns2b today. HMG is so OP.

One HMG denies 1-2 lerks easily, 150 damage before they know what is happening is easy, another marine with you using LMG/pistol/shotgun and that lerk very easily dies.

One HMG makes a single 1on1 with a fade questionable for the fade. You can easily kill them if they miss a swipe or two. Two HMGs vs a single fade and the fade just shouldnt risk it. 2 fades vs one hmg but you shouldnt solo with HMgs anyway so its still goign to be rough.

Onos vs HMG ez damage.

Skulk vs HMG dead skulk.

There is no downside to fighting a lifeform if you are positioned well and/or have a teammate. The only downside to the HMG right now is the reload time, which doesnt even feel like it makes sense. It feels like it was put in to nerf the player with the HMG rather than to try and balance how easy it is to destroy lifeforms.

So what if it does crappy structure damage if you can spend 20 res and rape everything aliens have.

It's not like a shotgun 20res either, a shotgun has a delay between its damage output, spraying a shotgun isnt possible and as such killing shotgunners can be done with skulks and with 6 shells missing a shot drastically changes your chances.
The HMG has none of these problems at all.

It needs to be harder to use, give it more recoil/spread so it is not possible to pick lerks out of the air so damn fast. Make it so tracking a skulk or fade is a challenge as it jumps around a room.
Right now it's just an LMG with more bullets more damage and a stupid reload time that doesnt affect engagements because of how much damage you deal out before you have to reload anyway.

Basically, it has no counter.

The only thing that could be close to counter it is umbra or spores. Except HMG can be had at 2mins, you don't have upgrades sure. But you already have base dmg of 15 so skulks get destroyed, lerks get destroyed and you dont have fades to even attempt to pick lifeforms.

Fix early game HMGs by making it cost inefficient early game. 25tres AA and/or 25? pres HMG
Give aliens a chance to counter them mid-game when they should appear by maybe putting spores onto Bio6?
Maybe umbra is good enough, but honestly because you lose all early game fights to HMG you barely get to 2 hives to get umbra anyway, let alone 3.

15--> 16.5-->18-->19.5

Why is it 1.5+ each level and not 1, is 18dmg a shot really not enough lol?

The HMG was supposed to be an alternative to the shotgun, instead it makes the shotgun look like a toy and you should only go shotguns if you wanna hive rush because HMGs will win you more fights than shotguns because they don't have downsides.

Cr4zy_ says

After playing some ns2b today. HMG is so OP.

One HMG denies 1-2 lerks easily, 150 damage before they know what is happening is easy, another marine with you using LMG/pistol/shotgun and that lerk very easily dies.

I saw that yesterday as well, that's just terrible for all lifeforms in general, but it's worse for the lerks. The other thing is there's no sound for this weapon so it's pretty easy to attack them quietly & discreetly. You can be lucky if the opposite team forgot to research that weapon though.

Cr4zy_ says

15--> 16.5-->18-->19.5

Why is it 1.5+ each level and not 1, is 18dmg a shot really not enough lol?

The HMG was supposed to be an alternative to the shotgun, instead it makes the shotgun look like a toy and you should only go shotguns if you wanna hive rush because HMGs will win you more fights than shotguns because they don't have downsides.

It is a 10% damage increase per level.

While I agree that HMG can come out pretty early and be devastating, the alien biomass scaling can be pretty hard to deal with as marines too.

I agree the HMG should be a slightly more expensive investment to make it come out later but I think it is necessary for combating the biomass and late game aliens. Shotgun won't get the job done alone.

Early game is a little bit skewed for aliens right now though. Early shotguns was pretty difficult but early HMG's is rough.

SammyG says

Cr4zy_ says

15--> 16.5-->18-->19.5

Why is it 1.5+ each level and not 1, is 18dmg a shot really not enough lol?

The HMG was supposed to be an alternative to the shotgun, instead it makes the shotgun look like a toy and you should only go shotguns if you wanna hive rush because HMGs will win you more fights than shotguns because they don't have downsides.

It is a 10% damage increase per level.

While I agree that HMG can come out pretty early and be devastating, the alien biomass scaling can be pretty hard to deal with as marines too.

I agree the HMG should be a slightly more expensive investment to make it come out later but I think it is necessary for combating the biomass and late game aliens. Shotgun won't get the job done alone.

Early game is a little bit skewed for aliens right now though. Early shotguns was pretty difficult but early HMG's is rough.

10% makes sense for the numbers dunno how I didn't think that through.

The HMG should be a mid to late game weapon, but right now it's too easy to get it early game and just melt lifeforms without upgrades. Sure you could rush shotguns early game but shotguns are handled well with lerks which at most pop a minute or two later.

HMG needs to be such a drastic investment that it becomes very high risk early game. To the point where losing one or two sets you back severely. Late game it should be a natural progression tech that you will get to at some point.

Maybe HMGs could require shotguns to be researched first?
That would keep them the same pres and AA the same pres to get early jets, but it doesn't screw the game with early HMGs, it forces the comm to invest 40tres and early game that's not very viable. While late game it becomes logical progression and isn't pres expensive to make it worthless vs high biomass.

"Maybe HMGs could require shotguns to be researched first?"

Another option could be to force a certain level of weapon upgrade to be required making it a bigger time and resource investment if you would want to get to HMG as fast as possible. I think only demanding shotgun + AA research is too little in time investment that it will still come out early enough to pick out the lerks if marines decides to rush it.

We could always remove the HMG. Why was it added?

PS_Mouse says

We could always remove the HMG. Why was it added?

To stop the shotgun monopoly

I think the HMG currently is too good. I might even argue that it is better than the shotgun. The HMG lets you pick off skulks from afar and can shred lerks. At least before if someone got a shotgun while it was good at defending yourself from fades and skulks lerks could spike and skulks could parasite then go around to bite resource towers.

EDIT: I really like how you need an advanced armoury for it though. I like how you can't just pick one up at any armory. Thoughts on needing weapons 1 researched and the weapon has 15 damage per bullet at weapons 1?

Maybe HMGs aren't that OP, if they occur late game. Maybe it's the alien side of things that need tweaking to play against HMGs.

Making shadow step a more viable upgrade so that shadow step has more versatility in movement to counter a HMG, that gives a HMG player a struggle when fighting a fade, because blink isn't totally viable especially with longer retreats. This however forces a single path counter to HMG which creates some stale alien play where they HAVE to go x route.

So im still in favor of a HMG nerf in dmg/clip/something to go with it, but aliens have to have an option to fight it well, unlike bile vs arcs and spikes vs shotguns etc
Especially the early game, they just dont fit in.

I don't think 100 > 80 bullets made any difference to HMG balance other than being an attempted bandaid fix.

It still destroys lifeforms, still comes out too early, too cheap for early game.
But hey you can't one clip an Onos on w3 anymore, so I guess that makes it fair.

The HMG is still pretty up in the air. Personally I do not believe the 100-->80 mag size solved anything either.