Xeno Mutator discussion

[kastion]

lets hope the devs give it a chance for the marines to adjust or I wont even get to see it before they cry so much the devs remove it lol. I would seriously just ignore all marine salt for a while if I was devs, all marines do is cry any time xenos get anything.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

Xeno population is the real big succ. Mutator is fine, and with some nerfs to attack damage and drag speed mutators, they'll be balanced.

[Solarmare]

All the larva meant for respawns are being taken up by actual players before the fighting starts. Larger numbers on it's own is enough for xenos.
Drag speed can be to much on top of general speed increases, those could probably be removed and reserved for slower castes to keep xenos from being too fast to kill or stop from abduction.

[FGRSentinel]

Yeah, I was a Boiler that first round it was in officially... Ancient runners were pulling other benos so fast it was hard for me to keep up with it. It's insane.

[Norwest]

Let me try to describe my issues with mutators as they stand with a specific experience:

The map is Ice Colony, about two hours in. The FOB has been completely overrun in short order, and we're in full evac. I'm an Engineer with only a small picture of the overall game, so I can't speak for large-scale balance or winrate or anything similar. What I can say is that I stood at the Alamo's side door and poured half an M41A mag into the rear end of a Mature Crusher, alongside another Marine doing the same thing, and did exactly nada. The Crusher stopped to type: his ass end exposed to fire, taking effective hits from two assault rifles, and I still saw his speech bubble pop up and heard the characteristic xeno growl. The Crusher than ran off, not bothering to cover his ass, and I was left with a strong feeling of futility. I can live with not killing a Crusher, sure, but I'd like to at least bother the thing. With some stat bonuses to him, though, the Crusher didn't even bother trying to shield himself from us. That, more than the actual in-game loss, was disheartening as all hell - it's one thing to be beaten by enemies who have to flank and respect your firepower to win, but it's another to be simply ignored.



This is obviously a very subjective experience of mine, and one that's also affected by other factors in play. To name a few:

1: As Grimcad pointed out, part of the current (im)balance is simply the number of xenos playing. Mutations are a shiny new update, and logically there are plenty of people interested in trying it out.

2: In line with this, Marines are going to blame their losses, whether deserved or otherwise, on mutators. It's new, it /is/ unbalanced, and it's easy to distract from Marine screwups by pointing to xenos buffs.

3: I'm writing all this because I have faith in the devs actually fixing things well. I was around for one of the first mutator tests, where basic weeds took three slashes to destroy. /That/ was pure hell; some Drone had weeded all of LZ1 on Solaris, and we hadn't even cleared the entire Hangar area before we were overrun. By contrast, the current mutator buff makes weeds destroy-able in two hits with a knife, and one with a bayonet-equipped weapon (i.e. an easily-accessed attachment carried by many PFCs). It gives significant utility to both machetes and bayonets, and all in all, seems a reasonable compromise.



With that in mind, here's my issues with the current mutator mechanics, and some suggestions for how to address them

A. Time: Even without mutators, xenos will generally become more powerful vis-a-vis Marines over time. Simply staying alive makes an individual xenos more powerful, to say nothing of evolving into a higher tier. Healing is a quick affair on any patch of weeds, while a wounded Marine needs two dropship rides and complicated surgery by a (hopefully not bald) doctor in order to fix a single case of IB or the like. Ammo runs short, reinforcements run low, and xenos get more ghosts joining them to boost their numbers. The overall effect is to turn xenos into a steamroller by the later game; even if Marines have been holding a defense well, a pair of Ancient Boilers will be able to make it uninhabitable in short order no matter what they try to do.

Mutators increase the effect, for fairly self-evident reasons. This makes Marines' best chance at victory a quick push, overwhelming the early xenos before they have a chance to evolve into their ridiculously-buffed strength...in other words, 'metarushing.*' The overall paradigm therefore becomes one of overwhelming victory or overwhelming defeat: either Marines leverage their early-game capabilities to win in 50 minutes or less, or they're overwhelmed in short order by rapidly-gaining xenos.

Suggestion: Provide some regular, in-game method for Marines to gain reinforcements or boosts. This would allow a competent Marine team more routes to victory than the current meta of "1: Rush Hive, 2: Hopefully Win."
Example #1: Intel. Currently, gathered intel serves no in-game purpose, and has no real effects other than looking nice on the end-of-round scoreboard. Gathering sufficient intel could provide for W-Y PMC, or simply regular Marine, reinforcements if enough data disks are gathered and decrypted. This would provide a strong advantage for Marines to actually leave the FOB and exercise map control, while simultaneously forcing the xenos to contest Marine recon missions to prevent the in-game effects. Example #2: Research. Bringing xenos corpses back to Research and experimenting on them would yield in-game effects such as acid-proof armor, un-latchable helmets, or similar boosts. Research itself would take considerable time, only coming into effect later into a round, and would be improved by more and/or higher-tier corpses recovered.
Example #3: Minor tweaks. Additional dropship fabricator points-per-minute to boost CAS firepower over the round, more solid-fuel boosters stocked or slightly decreased requirements to allow for more OBs over a long round (they'd still be limited by the in-game delay, of course), more Marine slots opening up as the round progresses (one additional Medic/Engineer at 13:00 round timer, an additional Specialist at 13:30, etc.). These would give some slight boosts to a beleaguered Marine team, while still favoring xenos over the long run.

*Let's be honest, even if Young Runner (420) leads the way back to the hive, it's still a little bit 'meta.'


B. Balance: I'm sure that others will point out the degree of issues here, but my biggest gripe is that mutators carry no downsides whatsoever. You can stack these stat boosts for days, with no penalty for doing so, and it's no surprise that xenos players would do exactly that.

Stack-effects are an obvious issue here which needs to be addressed. There's currently no mechanism for preventing a player from taking multiple mutators of the same type, along with asking for pheromones to boost the same stat (damage, speed, health, etc.). I imagine that was one of the factors underlying the cases I saw personally, and it's one which can be addressed fairly readily.

Suggestion: make mutators be tradeoffs, rather than flat boosts, in line with how attachments work. Basic 'low-tier' attachments like the Laser Sight offer low only-positive boosts, while 'high-tier' attachments like the Barrel Charger offer a significant boost alongside a significant penalty (or three). Several other people have suggested this in dchat, and I think it's a fairly sensible method of making mutators fun for xenos (i.e. opening up more playstyles) without rendering them annoyingly OP.

C. Flavor: While I like the concept of letting individual xenos specialize further, the changes themselves are all effectively invisible. There's no notice that Elder Lurker (420) is actually OMGWTF-tough, other than the fact that it'll shrug off twice the rifle bullets it would have previously. Similarly, since the boosts themselves are all extremely generic rather than clear sub-specialties, it's impossible to know whether or not the Runner doing circles around you is capable of ripping your intestines out in two slashes or is instead tough as nails. There's no means of identifying or combating mutations, and when combined with their unbalanced nature (i.e. no downsides whatsoever), make them very frustrating to fight against.

Suggestion: Rather than flat stat-boosts, make mutations be fairly specialized. Each class would carry one or two sub-specialties, and they'd be indicated with a tagline much like xenos age currently is. The sub-specialties would either be a single minor stat boost, or a more powerful boost to a particular area at the cost of some other effect. Example: Runners would be able to diversify into having a better tackle at the cost of speed, or vice versa. The relevant mutation would be indicated when the xenos is examined ("This creature seems to have sacrificed some of its speed for a stronger leap."), and the effects would be either fixed or variable within a small range (1-2 tile increased tackle distance and 1-2 second additional tackle stun duration, for instance).

This would provide a clear 'flavor' to different mutations, making them easier for both sides to understand, and thereby more rewarding to fight against. If that same Crusher I mentioned originally had also had a flavor text of "This creature has mutated into a slower but tougher form," for instance, then I wouldn't be nearly as salty about how much damage it had soaked up.


Conclusion: Devs, thank you for making an effort to improve the game. My salt aside, I'm sure this was quite the effort to code, and I appreciate you putting in the effort. That being said, this new change has been a bonafide pain in the ass to deal with on the opposing side, to the point where I simply haven't had much fun playing against xenos with mutators active. I'd like to see these new changes balanced out somewhat, and I hope you consider how to make mutators fun for both sides.

[ThePiachu]

Just to note - first two rounds the mutators were introduced there was a bug with damage boost being too cheap, allowing you to stack it too many times. Especially during the first Ice round, the Queen took the attack boost 3 times, and some people stacked it a few times over as well. that issue has been resolved after the first two rounds.

There was also a bug with how armour was calculated making you less armoured if you took it. That was also fixed.

[Norwest]

I would seriously just ignore all marine salt for a while if I was devs, all marines do is cry any time xenos get anything.

You did the exact same thing regarding the tank*, mate, so let's not go throwing too many rocks, eh?


*Thread: viewtopic.php?f=135&t=19037&start=25

Just to note - first two rounds the mutators were introduced there was a bug with damage boost being too cheap, allowing you to stack it too many times. Especially during the first Ice round, the Queen took the attack boost 3 times, and some people stacked it a few times over as well. that issue has been resolved after the first two rounds.

There was also a bug with how armour was calculated making you less armoured if you took it. That was also fixed.

Hah, thanks, that makes some sense. I went from 100% to dead by a Ravager in ~2 slashes (I didn't know at the time that mutators were active either, lol). That should help explain the more ridiculous instances of insta-deaths in the prior round(s).

[Solarmare]

Well this is a xeno buff more or less, once it's toned down enough it makes way for improvements to marines.
One thing that could be looked at is the early evo boost on top of it.
Largest issue is more or less the xeno population which could make it hard to tell how much is needed this early.
The mutations that actually noticeably affect gameplay like speed are probably going to be the most favored and chosen though.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

My favorite mutator build right now is Hardy Weed into Boost pheromone into Boost health into Boost Speed/Slash damage for Drone. You can honestly do so much with Mature Prae tier Frenzy at Ancient and it's so much fucking fun. Hardy Weed at the start to make sure the weed you spread builds up real quick too.

[greenfire0215]

This is just me, but i feel like the xenos should have description that would tell others that this drone has stronger scales, or this runner has sharper claws. just a nitpick but i feel like it would be useful for knowing who is doing what with their gameplay.

my second opinion, which i'm sure someone has already talked about but could there maybe be more cheaper mutations like the damage mutation? i was thinking the plasma or health for the individual xeno but for queen the costs would stay the same.

-your favorite slug main,
Greenfire0215.

[NeatoNito]

Current thoughts, Its pretty cool, I love the chaos it brings, It's going to force marines to step it up a notch instead of forgoing FOB and rushing like we used to.
Right now there is a huge resurgence of Xeno players and that may be tipping the scales. Ride out the hype, Let people learn, Let the xenos lose a few players and then we can see where it actually is.

Before Mutators xenos usually had upward of 20 buried larva just waiting when the transport dropped, we're seeing Greatly reduced buried larva and alot more active Xeno, Which is good! Xenobase has been slim lately but because of the new buff EVERYONE wants to try it.

TL;DR: Xenos have alotta players, Making old marine tactics outdated.

[kastion]

You did the exact same thing regarding the tank*, mate, so let's not go throwing too many rocks, eh?


*Thread: viewtopic.php?f=135&t=19037&start=25

we had months of the tank, you have had 4 matches of mutators, seriously?

[Boersgard]

Played a round as a Mature Warrior, 2 HP mutations, 1 Speed mutation, 1 Queen HP mutation

Fast enough to keep up with fleeing predators in run mode
Fast enough to also keep up with unupgraded runners and ravagers
Could tank 4-5 predator melees (maybe more) without going into crit

When we got to the Almayer, someone threw an incendiary grenade, I decided to walks straight into it, stood in the middle of the fire and danced, it did no percievable damage to me. I didn't even catch on fire.
Later one of the marines was tossing as many hefa nades as he could - I decided to test how many hits I could take and ran within 5 tiles of them. I took easily 6, maybe even 8-10 HEFA's, and only the one that I intentionally ran 1 tile away from did any serious damage (~20% hp) all the rest of the HEFA nades did about 5% or less.

After testing the aforementioned HEFA spam damage, I ran off to heal at ~20% hp remaining, at the same time as the entire PMC ERT team came down the hall, so I got caught laying on the ground unable to run at low health, and this is what finally killed me.

There's no point to playing marines anymore. I really don't know what this dev team is thinking or how xeno mains even find this fun. I can be sloppy, overcommit to attacks, and generally be a xeno noob and still faceroll things. About the only thing that even presents any REMOTE sense of danger are PB shotguns and CAS/Mortar/OB (I have now witnessed an OB called on 25+ aliens nesting in the alamo and everyone but an AFK drone had time to get off the floor, jumble and block each other at the alamo entrances and still and run outside the blast radius before the OB hit - speed improvements now make a mockery of artillery)

[kastion]

Played a round as a Mature Warrior, 2 HP mutations, 1 Speed mutation, 1 Queen HP mutation

Fast enough to keep up with fleeing predators in run mode
Fast enough to also keep up with unupgraded runners and ravagers
Could tank 4-5 predator melees (maybe more) without going into crit

When we got to the Almayer, someone threw an incendiary grenade, I decided to walks straight into it, stood in the middle of the fire and danced, it did no percievable damage to me. I didn't even catch on fire.
Later one of the marines was tossing as many hefa nades as he could - I decided to test how many hits I could take and ran within 5 tiles of them. I took easily 6, maybe even 8-10 HEFA's, and only the one that I intentionally ran 1 tile away from did any serious damage (~20% hp) all the rest of the HEFA nades did about 5% or less.

After testing the aforementioned HEFA spam damage, I ran off to heal at ~20% hp remaining, at the same time as the entire PMC ERT team came down the hall, so I got caught laying on the ground unable to run at low health, and this is what finally killed me.

There's no point to playing marines anymore. I really don't know what this dev team is thinking or how xeno mains even find this fun. I can be sloppy, overcommit to attacks, and generally be a xeno noob and still faceroll things. About the only thing that even presents any REMOTE sense of danger are PB shotguns and CAS/Mortar/OB

Hefas have always been like that, xenos aren't marines they don't die from IB and fractures so the only thing that a hefa does is raw damage to them. To get more raw damage you have to be closer to get hit by more projectiles. 5 tiles away you only get hit by 1 projectile. Go stand ontop of a hefa and see what happens.

I still think fire is bugged cause I see marines and xenos run through it and not catch on fire all the time. It never makes sense to me.

btw unupgraded runners and ravagers are really slow so that's not saying much.

[Solarmare]

Gas size of boilers could probably be a repeatable mutation rather than something you get from age, would make an option to take for them there.

[FGRSentinel]

Alright, I'm drawing the line here. We've now had 2-3 rounds in a row where the xenos took the planet by the one hour mark (13:00) and there was nothing the Marines could do. What does the queen say about it? "Why are the tallhosts so bad?" Having to sit through this soul-crushing crap for 4+ rounds in a row is bad enough, but getting openly MOCKED about how futile it is? I'm done. This isn't fun to play. There's no fun in a fight you know you're going to lose before you even know your job for the round. There's no fun in being trash-talked icly by the other side for how pathetic you are. There's no fun in ANY of this anymore.

[Avalanchee]

Yeah not gonna lie Mutators are toasted beyond recognition.

Either remove pheromones and nerf mutators or just get rid of mutators completely

[Audi_Gzz]

Honestly this is still kind of broken, but on my take this strayed away from the hivemind shit all admins and mods be enforcing on the server with personel perks and shit for xenos. It should honestly just be the queen in control of the mutators and no one else. Anyways onto my next thing the damage is broken I've been a ancient runner with 4x damage and I hit a wired cade a squad engie built four times and it was destroyed. Second the drag speed is also kind of broken because you can just get body snatched. And if a tackle chance is being upped again that will break the fuck out of the game. The game is honestly boring now with not even fun fights. Its honestly have been the past rounds just a xeno stomp by 12:40. I latejoined as a PFC on a big red round today and by 12:30 everyone was panicking "THE FOB IS GETTING SIEGED. WE'RE GETTING FLANKED!" So yeah these early rounds are ass even while playing as a xeno it was boring it honestly took out all the fun. The queen is useless because the xenos don't even need her I never seen a queen screech or deovi for marines unless it was during the almayer boarding and even then they still didn't screech so either way its just boring. If this is gonna stay in just leave it like WO xenos, they have a hivemind, no queen, drones that can't evolve but spread weeds so xenos can heal. And for them to also just keep the personel perks they get. I understand where the dev team tried to go with this direction but during a townhall we was told the dev team was looking for a 85/25 winrate for CM. I won't go on a rant about that sentence as I hope if you're reading this you can see whats wrong. Not only with the ratio but due to the fact it will be boring and even a worst winrate then what Apop had imagined for the server. I would say a decent winrate would be like 60/40 or 65/35. Those are more resonable numbers. If the marines are gonna be cardboard boxes to xenos you might as well make the guns more lore accurate and make the guns stronger and be able to put down a xeno easier.

[xXen0zS1ay3rXx]

I'm sad I won't be able to see these before the devs make the snap decision to remove them after a few rounds since I'm away sadface

[kastion]

I'm sad I won't be able to see these before the devs make the snap decision to remove them after a few rounds since I'm away sadface

Ya me too im at work right now and I wont beable to play for about 6 hours.

[WinterClould]

More xeno buffs plz. Lets buff the xenos so good that the marines get the qol buffs they also need. Its a win win in the end if balanced right I say.

[Zheak]

Alright, I'm drawing the line here. We've now had 2-3 rounds in a row where the xenos took the planet by the one hour mark (13:00) and there was nothing the Marines could do. What does the queen say about it? "Why are the tallhosts so bad?" Having to sit through this soul-crushing crap for 4+ rounds in a row is bad enough, but getting openly MOCKED about how futile it is? I'm done. This isn't fun to play. There's no fun in a fight you know you're going to lose before you even know your job for the round. There's no fun in being trash-talked icly by the other side for how pathetic you are. There's no fun in ANY of this anymore.

The irony in this statement is almost too much for me to bear... Xenos had to deal with this as well prior to the Mutators being put into effect and how did Marines act when Xenos lost in under an hour? "git gud xenos" "fucking rats" "retard queen(s)" "gg ez" "why are the xenos so bad?".

Xenos have constantly been given a bad hand with multiple updates to their mechanics (only Drone castes and de-nest dead hosts, Tackle nerfs and the Burrower's existence) while Marines had gotten many buffs to their armaments and general explosive buffs, which were so strong for the Tank that it had to be disabled due to being capable of gibbing anything with a direct hit.

Xenos have been dealing with this for about six months and you've only experienced this for a handful of rounds... Guess Marine Players can finally walk a mile in Xenomorph Player's shoes, eh?

To be on-topic: I think removing the straight stat boosts from Xenomorphs and give them something unique to their caste/tier so it can encourage different playstyles rather than "unga bunga damage".

Give castes capable of Spitting an Accuracy mutation so that they don't have to miss one-three tile spits in exchange for reducing the damage they do with their claws to encourage capturing them alive rather than half dead.
Give the Defender castes a heartier exoskeleton in exchange for a reduced speed and/or longer cooldown on abilities or increased charge wind-up for the Crusher.
Remove the Speed mutation and reduce the Pull Speed for the Runner (castes) so they can not be so abusive by pulling poorly playing sisters out from danger in a literal blink of an eye.
Keep the stat mutations on the Queen's mutation list at a lower cost/effectiveness in the event Xenomorphs cannot make use of the extra Leaders or extra T2/3 slots or if the Queen deems them to be more valuable to the Hive.

We won't honestly know how these mutations are really affecting the game since, like with every new buff/weapon addition, the other side will opt out of the usual routine to try out something new and inflate the amount of players that would otherwise be at a reasonable amount. (Tank Addition, Warrior/Defender Addition, M4A3/M41A Buffs)

[kastion]

snip

Speed is way too important to give it up for anything, even extra armor. The only way armor would balance losing speed is if you are literally deflecting bullets like back in the old days. You can see how important speed is because everyone is taking it with the new mutations. I honestly think they should just disable speed upgrade for runners and leave it for everyone else. Runners are fast enough at ancient already.

What I find funny is most of the people crying in this thread are the ones that talk shit to me in OOC telling me to get good and im just salty. Its funny to see the shoe on the other foot.

[kastion]

I wonder what would happen if we gave m41a IFF. No other gun, shotguns should still blast everyone. m41a though could make some interesting balance changes if it had IFF. It would obviously need some tweaking damage wise and stuff to compensate for being able to fire behind other people and stuff, but it would definently make marines (atleast in fire squads) a lot stronger. Then xenos being stronger wouldn't be a bad thing.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

Pure stat mutations are boring. Stuff like Hardy Weed, Acid Melt upgrade, Pheromone Upgrade, Boiler Bombard upgrade are way more interesting and should be focused on rather than the stat mutations tbh.

I wonder what would happen if we gave m41a IFF. No other gun, shotguns should still blast everyone. m41a though could make some interesting balance changes if it had IFF. It would obviously need some tweaking damage wise and stuff to compensate for being able to fire behind other people and stuff, but it would definitely make marines (at least in fire squads) a lot stronger. Then xenos being stronger wouldn't be a bad thing.

Those PFCs will get to utilize more of their new vendor AP mags for sure.