I think there is real concern after some high level ns2 rounds. Is it easier to shoot lerks and skulls? Of course. It also feels good to shoot what you should be hitting and not feel like the game is out to get you with hit reg which did happen with the old hitboxes. You also have the issue on coming from vanilla to comp and really feel like the game is different. I do think the game can feel good, keep the movement feel of vanilla that has been the goal of comp mod, and balance the game better.
I propose the following:
1) SG nerf, make the spread slightly larger than vanilla. 8 vs 8.5 or use vanilla spread. It shouldn't be easier to use a sg in comp. Especially considering the sg snowball effect.
2) Vanilla Lerk Hp. Gives lerks more breathing room. This with the sg nerf would hopefully give lerks the ability to do more at multiple points in the round.
3) Remove skulk nerf hp with biomass. This was to make the game feel better by not having to shoot a tanky skulk mid to late game. The game seems to play better when you can get the skulls and lerks down. The issue with this is good shooters can get the skulls down so quickly, and can switch targets so fast. I think this needs to be removed for high level play.
Guys remember that when you change compmod you change it for every division. If you nerf marines will not this lead to the decrease the marine win rate in the lower skilled matches which is already too low?
Perhaps it's better to come up with some new features for aliens which helps to deal with shotguns and which is hard to perform? Maybe some long range dps? Obviously spikes is not enough.
Recently you moved spores to biomass 7 and increased it's damage but how about to add a cooldown to it and making it 5th biomass instead? Good usage of spores can interfere the marine's indestructible stack but cooldown on it won't allow to use it too frequent and spam thoughtlessly.
You can also return its fog effect to increase its advantage against marine stacks.
You are attempting to put a band aid on an open wound instead of suturing it. Why do you want to fix what the devs did to the game by screwing around with more mechanics, especially untested ones? This is exactly how NS2 ended up in the balance fiasco it's in right now.
The best solution is to revert hitboxes and SG spread to normal values. As Home said, why does it "feel better" to hit something you actually missed? You should not balance the game around the lowest fields of play, it needs to be balanced from the top down.
You need to remember: In terms of balance, less is more. Each time you propose adding something, you seem to need to add even more to balance it. Start with reverting hitboxes/SG spread/alien HP to their original values, and see how it plays out.
I'm not really proposing adding anything. The 3 things I listed are basically in the vanilla game. The major issue could be there are too many alien nerfs where the vanilla values would play better. It's not about hitting something you missed even if that can be technically true. If you look at the new lerk and skulk hitboxes, they may not be that crazy. The fade was a huge box with basically no holes. The lerk and skulk is there so network lately does not have as huge of an effect on your shots. Sure you would hit more, but you guys are acting like the hitboxes are crazy. You could make a different argument about the old ones. I found this post: Here
As an alternative to switching around with the spread of the SG, id much rather see a decrease in damage. -1 damage for each bullet might be enough. -2 damage/bullet might be needed though.
Two reasons. Burst damage is hard to deal with for aliens. If the burst is lowered, that makes the engagement more brawly, rather than the current need to hit and run.
A2 is terribly strong right now. If the damage is decreased, weapons upgrades will be much more interesting to get, and thus a better alternative to the "op" a2.
One might think that this only serves the higher divisions well, but that is where it will have the biggest impact on the game, since they hit alot more consistently. The lower divisions will have a bit more issues with the aliens, but it isn't news that they already had problems with them.
On the subject of hitboxes: i know alot of players have called for smaller hitboxes, and while they do have an impact on the gameplay, they have a extreme impact on the axioms of the game. The reason that Mephellis in the first place had to fix stuck spots on Jambi, was because that comp mod reverted the sizes. The smaller you make the entities, the more stuck spots - which is the reason why UWE never listened to this in the past - they would have had to remake every map from the bottom up, walljumping would be entirely different and alot of other movement would just be problematic. There is alot of work involved with making the boxes smaller. It is not a small request.
"It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, despite as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope" - J.R.R. Tolkien
Yes, you could do this with damage. You could also take 1 or 2 pellets off the sg. Not sure how easy that is to do, but would lessen the burst damage. The issue with doing this is, the full damange sg blast vs fades is important to how the game is balanced. When you need cara as a fade, when you don't. If you change that max damage sg shot, you could mess up things with the fade. But if it's so difficult to deal with the max damage shot right now, maybe a slight nerf would be ok.
I thought you would like the changes I proposed as they are all basically going back to vanilla stuff in the game.
After discussions with people, this is my new proposal:
1) SG spread nerf, 8.5 or 8 (currently 8.5 in vanilla, 9 in comp) SG should not be easier in comp than it is in vanilla. If anything it should require more skill/timing/positioning
2) Lerk Vanilla HP.
3) Reduce weapon pickup time by 3-5 seconds. This is for the following:
this is to help the sg snowball effect where marines get sgs at 6 min
hardly ever lose them, when they do, get them back, then they have 40-60 res
You still can't do anything, and the snowball is starting.
I think with this slight high level nerf, it makes aliens feel like they can gain something by grouping up and making plays.
Right now, it takes about 12-13 seconds to spawn in if no one is in the spawn queue for a marine. It takes 25 seconds for a weapon to disappear on the ground. So currently, you have about 12-13 seconds from the time you spawn in to pick up a weapon you dropped.
So the SG cone atm is bigger than before right? 9 versus 8.5 in vanilla?
What is the lmg cone? Is the pistol still hitscan?
The problem with SGs is not the pick up time, it's the fighting mechanic with it: a SG clears 3 skulks too easily.
Now i understand it's a 20 res investment, but with a lmg nearby and a "ok comm" you just become unclearable until 2 fades, a lerk, 2 skulks and a bonewall are used against you.
What's the timing between shots on SG? Wasn't it accelerated at some point because they removed 2 ammos from the mag?
When schu asked me how I rated rines player I always told him there are good laners (defensives mindset) and good pressure (offensive mindset) with the 3rd catergory of players being the impact SG. Because in NS the SG is so good that you can have this one guy pretty silent for the first 6 minutes until SGs pop and bam he starts dealing 1K damage every fight.
Just added this to say atm everyone on rines is a impact SG, you can have a shitty round start, once SG pop they turn the tide of the game too much.
The sg spread is larger in both comp mod and vanilla than the game was years ago. Comp Mod is more compact than vanilla, 9 is more compact sg spread than vanilla 8.5.
Lmg cone hasn't been changed. Pistol is still hit scanned, hasn't been changed as far as I know.
Timing between SG shots hasn't been changed at all in years.
I want to increase the sg spread because it directly impacts skill and not reward (damage), meaning maximum damage is unaltered, but the skill needed to land that max damage shot is increased a little. As Hera said, everyone is an impact SG player, this suggests that SGs are too easy, increasing spread means you now have to time and position better to achieve the weapons full impact. Higher skill ceiling is needed for the SG in comp imo.
wait so shotguns have a more compact cone in comp than they do in vanilla? wtf when did this happen and who thought it was a good idea? the whole point of messing with the spread was to make shotguns less effective at longer range, and this does the exact opposite of that
"#EXPERIMENTAL reduced shotgun clipsize to 6 and reduced dmg/spread by…
… 20%, in an attempt to make it more controllable (for both sides, fade scales now less with bio mass)..."
From ns2 uwe github, about the clip size change 4 years ago.
Deleting a pellet form the SG would be as simple as deleting a line about the vectors, or just decrease "kShotgunBulletsPerShot" by X, when the code is getting that number. But that should be done in pairs, to keep the pellet pattern symetrical. As a counter measure you could simply increase the damage.
You could also just make the SG light damage, like the pistol aka if the target has armor, you do less damage. Does have the problem that carapace gets really really good, and I am unsure if the target has f.ex. just 1 armor, would all the pellets do decreased damage or just one - simply dont know. It does nerf the sg sufficiently alone.
"It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, despite as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope" - J.R.R. Tolkien
The sg spread in vanilla was changed after the comp sg spread. They happened to pick a spread that has more spread than comp. We have discussed it in the past, and it was not changed to match vanilla. We may end up changing that shortly.
Hitboxes and collision are separate. You can make the hitboxes as big as you want without changing the movement collision at all, you know, because they are completely separate. Maps don't get affected by this AT ALL.
Also it's not that difficult to do. You do need the model sources to compile them with different hitboxes though, so it's not something the community can do past revert models to older versions.
Also, the reason for stuck spots in Jambi is because it was made by 40 million different people and it's put together horribly with a shitton of exposed backfaces which get you stuck.
"It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, despite as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope" - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Shotgun problem was always quite a headache when it came to balance but somehow we managed to get it to a pretty good place. The gun needs to be strong enough early game to give the Marines a boost vs the advance lifeforms, at the same time it needs to be powerful enough to work in the late game. Considering how the Pres system works in ns2 balancing shotguns fully for both at the same time while keeping them fun to use was pretty much impossible.
What the game needed was another weapon to use for the late game so you could focus the shotgun as a mid game/burst damage weapon. This is why I ended up pushing the HMG and finally got it implement, however when it finally went through I stopped working on the balance mod. It gave the marines a weapon that could deal with the Onos without forcing them to have their full team at 1 location.
If I had kept working on the balance mod I would have worked on making it a real decision to get more than a single shotgun for a marine in the early game. If the aliens could force the marines to buy more shotguns they would have less hmg's and jetpacks in the lategame. This would have created a situation where aliens could force Marines to use only tier 2 weapons (shotguns) with good pressure while marines would want to save for Tier 3 weapon(HMG)
hmg is 40 tres for the comm to drop, this shit is 2 expensive and dumb. im not sure how much it is for a marine to buy one himself, but the research is like 20-25 pres? im not sure hoenstly i never cclick it and i always recycle the advance armory b/c late game marines is actually still just ARMOR2/SGs which ccome online at like 4mins-4:30. weird how marines tech to late game 5 mins into the game
j/k if 1 marine can hold their ground vs 2 fades + gorge + lerk with med spam something aint right. Though those moments are the most fun parts of playing imo so don't nerf my SG =)
