Xeno Mutator discussion

[Pshy]

The larvae mutator is useless in normal play. Xeno's almost never actually use up all of their larva unless the hive has lost the fight and are slowly trickling in meaningless t1's to slow the eventual marine major, id say its better to have it than not have it but it almost exists like a trap since you lose meaningful upgrades to get it.

Weed durability is a slippery slope that should be removed. Marines already get sick of of one click weed removal, If weeds are going to be that much of a hassle the slow should be more minor

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

dude he said it was 1 time for 5 larva. That is hardly infinite replacements.

In the 2 mutator tests, queens were still able to get multiple larva packs. Also, the whole mutator thing borked burrowed larva count, and we got the infinite burrowed larva dupe bug thing again. So that's a big oof

[lurkermain]

The test yesterday had lots of xenos because something was bugged about larva numbers.

[KingPhilipIII]

MUST HAVE MORE SPEED

[Ketrai]

I know that speed boost caps out. I don't exactly know how much, but just picking it once can be very solid. Though the effect varies on xenos because of tick delay. Also, here's some unique abilities I've found.

- Boost pheromones. (Raises pheromone strength by one stage. If you want to be a specialized phero dispenser, pick drone, mature to ancient, you get 4 mutators esentially, so you can go from very weak to > weak > normal > strong > very strong when you reach ancient, and still pick speed or hardier weeds. This in my fair opinion, should be locked to just prae, or it should only be able to be picked once. Or only for more advanced drone castes such as carrier / hivelord, who mature slower. HAving both very strong recovery, very strong warding, and very strong frenzy at the same time without the help of any praes is madness.

- Acid strength. This can be picked by any caste that has the ability to dump globs of acid over items / structures to melt them. Each stage it upgrades the acid to the next level. So a mature sentinel for example, can already take this perk twice, and end up with boiler acid. This does come with increased plasma cost, so you can become a dedicated flank opener, or gun melter. I personally think this is a bit too strong on sentinels, as with their speed they can just spit on a spec, walk up to them and melt their gun. Especially annoying if the mag harness doesn't work for some reason. On a spitter it works really well too, as they seem to have better plasma regeneration than a boiler, especially with upgrades. This denies marines a lot of flares... if this remains an option, marines need to get other ways of producing lights, at least in static defenses. Maybe spotlights like the ones on the DS? It also makes defending a barricaded area a bit harder, especially if a prae upgrades their acid.

- Boiler gas. This one is probably so busted. It extends the effective spread range of a cloud by one. Which also seems to upgrade the damage it does at the center. A young boiler has a gas range of 4 tiles, a mature boiler that of 5. Every time you take this upgrade, it extends said range by one. So a mature boiler can have 7 tiles of gas in each direction. Effectively capable of denying marines about 14 spots at a barricade line... whilst aditionally forcing them back so far it isn't easy to punish anything running up to melt the barricades. Even a grenade, as you're more likely to get it stuck behind the cades destroying them. This should definitely be limited to being purchaseable only once, to 6 tiles. Or it needs to do something else, like gas spreading faster. (or if what piachu says is right, and gas becomes 6 tiles on elder. Mutators could make it 9 tiles, utter madness. At that point you're suffocating half the screen.

- hardier weeds. This makes weeds harder to remove. In addition to purple sacks being satan incarnate now, the fact marines have to spend longer and longer to clear a single tile of weeds, means you might as well equip everyone with flamers or pack your bags and go home. It'll be impossible to chase xenos easily or counter pushing, as there will always be a layer of nigh indestructible weeds.

- Other things I think are kinda busted?
* Pulling speed. This is the ultimate meme. Pick this and only speed as a runner, wait for any marine to go down due to a stun, swoop in and drag them all the way to the hive before they can get up. No seriously, it's almost potent enough to allow you to do so. You have basically no pulling delay with this upgraded.

* crushers just upgrading hp. Congratulations, you've become such a bullet sponge to the point your only counter is either being very stupid, or eating a RPG. Make sure to carry a pocket very strong recovery drone. Same-ish effect with just upgrading armor. If you upgrade just armor, normal bullets become effectless. This also upgrades your side and back armor, so you're no longer as vulnerable to being shot in the *** syndrome.

* ravs upgrading only damage and taking one stage of speed. This is just mental. I don't know if it increases decap chance, but the fact you can buy 3x damage every time you mature, means you can get damage so high just touching a marine will give them a long visit to the medic, if not immediately hospitalize them.

I'd like to see more niche upgrades, such as fire or explosion resistance. I've seen runners upgrade just armor to become minesweepers. It'd be interesting to see a portion of the hive capable of wading through flames comfortably enough not to die immediately. like 25% per stage or something, or 33%. So you need at least 3-4 upgrades to become immume. If you do this, let the incenerator be carried on a belt? It's a bit stupid not to be able to carry an actual gun whilst being chased by fire resistant benos. Well, that or carrying a scabbard I guess. They're a bit cumbersome tho.

[Ketrai]

Also queen mutators I've seen.

- larva injection : Strong, but I think stronger than intended because of the extra larva bug. I wouldn't say this is that busted as most of the time the hive doesn't get enough players to fill all the monkey larvae. This wasn't a normal game, so you can't really judge it fairly yet.

- More T2 and T3 slots : This one is fun. I'm not really certain it's crazy potent, as a lot of the T1 xenos still come with unique roles and abilities that make them important. Imagine a hive with little drones. Imagine one without runners. In the round I saw, there were 23 t1 / 15 / 15 respectively. I would maybe limit this to T1 only, as an army of praetorians or boilers is sure to ruin any marine's game to the point they feel forced to meta-barricade the almayer ladders.

[TheMaskedMan2]

I've talked about my opinions on this already but to put it simply, I think basic stat boosts is a bit boring and unneeded. Yes it's nice to feel a little more powerful, but it's simply a little dull to spend "Special Points" on 20 more Health or what not. I believe the stat-boosts are generally already handled quite well by the Maturity system, while the mutation system should offer more unique "Side-grades" that you can create your own playstyle with.

Things like Wider Gas/Boosted Pheros/Hardy Weeds and so on and so forth are all unique and interesting changes that makes Xeno gameplay more fun and a little bit of choice added. More stuff like that, in my opinion.

[kastion]

In the 2 mutator tests, queens were still able to get multiple larva packs. Also, the whole mutator thing borked burrowed larva count, and we got the infinite burrowed larva dupe bug thing again. So that's a big oof

i understand that its messed up in the tests, but he has stated the intent and it will be fixed before it goes live so its not worth making ab ig deal out of imo.

[kastion]

I've talked about my opinions on this already but to put it simply, I think basic stat boosts is a bit boring and unneeded. Yes it's nice to feel a little more powerful, but it's simply a little dull to spend "Special Points" on 20 more Health or what not. I believe the stat-boosts are generally already handled quite well by the Maturity system, while the mutation system should offer more unique "Side-grades" that you can create your own playstyle with.

Things like Wider Gas/Boosted Pheros/Hardy Weeds and so on and so forth are all unique and interesting changes that makes Xeno gameplay more fun and a little bit of choice added. More stuff like that, in my opinion.

things like ravagers that shoot fire, crushers that pounce on people, spitters that can hide. yes I agree.

[CABAL]

What does "Boost Damage" affects? Only from "Click-Slashing", or also abilities dmg like Rav pounce/Crusher charge/Warrior punch/Defender tail swipe?

[kastion]

What does "Boost Damage" affects? Only from "Click-Slashing", or also abilities dmg like Rav pounce/Crusher charge/Warrior punch/Defender tail swipe?

i would assume it works on ravager charge cause the charge knocks thme down and give you an auto slash so im pretty sure its just a regular slash.

[CABAL]

i would assume it works on ravager charge cause the charge knocks thme down and give you an auto slash so im pretty sure its just a regular slash.

Then it's another "abuse" like with armor on "tankier" xenos. With this different xenos can be super 100% specialised in one art, which means that with minimal teamplay whole hive can be just Jack of all trades. Welcome 75%-25% again.

OK, I will plant weeds as drone. *Picks only weeds upgrades*. Industructable weeds.
OK, I will tank any damage as defender. *Picks only armor*. Industructable xeno.

Armor upgrade should slow down xeno a bit and Damage upgrade should increase delay a bit.

SADAR and AP ammo shouldn't be considered as counter to everything. There is only one SADAR spec and not everyone runs Pulse Rifle.

[kastion]

Then it's another "abuse" like with armor on "tankier" xenos. With this different xenos can be super 100% specialised in one art, which means that with minimal teamplay whole hive can be just Jack of all trades. Welcome 75%-25% again.

OK, I will plant weeds as drone. *Picks only weeds upgrades*. Industructable weeds.
OK, I will tank any damage as defender. *Picks only armor*. Industructable xeno.

Armor upgrade should slow down xeno a bit and Damage upgrade should increase delay a bit.

SADAR and AP ammo shouldn't be considered as counter to everything. There is only one SADAR spec and not everyone runs Pulse Rifle.

Welcome to xeno, where we have to rely on queen screech to win 90% of the time. Sucks doesnt it? Atleast yall have cuckshot still.

[KennyTGuy]

What I would like to ask devs is, is this new system designed to be a pure power level buff for xenos or is the goal to make xenos more fun to play with variation?

[CABAL]

Welcome to xeno, where we have to rely on queen screech to win 90% of the time. Sucks doesnt it? Atleast yall have cuckshot still.

Easly replaceable, strong, fairly fast and with no counter besides massive concentrated fire? I would pick that.

PB buckshot is not the answer for anything. It's not easy to land PB, it's not easy to hit with SADAR, it's easy to pounce and screech.
Not everyone picks shotgun, not everyone picks buckshot, not everyone even tries to PB.
Xenos need Queen only to break good push. In other occasions it's just crutch for bad xenos. Screech and lurker spoiled you and you can't say back that buckshot spoiled me since I'm never using it.

[NeatoNito]

Personally, I think there is more testing that needs to be done. Most of what you'll get for now is Speculation.

[Saytkl77]

From a game design perspective I like the mutations that change behaviour or have some visible impact on gameplay more than the stat upgrades.

From a balance perspective, I feel like it fine to have powerful mutations that do cool stuff, and if the xeno winrate is too high, there are a million levers you can push to make marines stronger. I feel like a good design would be mutations letting you do powerful cool things or roles that aren't otherwise possible, and if that ends up making the xenos too strong, start buffing marine damage / req points / med chem effectiveness etc.

I think it could be cool to have mutations that have a massive downside and a massive upside, like say you can evolve cloak on any xeno but get 40% less hp, or a hive wide upgrade like chat was talking about of a "red hive" that only lets you evolve to ravager caste and drone but you get extra larva/damage or something. I think there is a lot of ways you can use mutations as a system to make each round feel fresh, because espically the hive mutations actually gives the queen an option to choose some kind of strategy that has a meaningful difference from round to round.

[digitalattack]

From what I saw, I think speed to way to beneficial/potent with it making lurkers move at runner speed, damage this recent round seems pretty high, but I can't really say anything considering I don't know how they spent there points, not sure if you want to talk PFC points here as well but those where pretty good in terms of choices any chance you might add skill injectors to that list as well to spice up PFC game play a bit?

[Cain]

I'd say it's balanced;

What I like the most is that the queens mutators for the hive meant that I molded my playstyle towards that.

What I liked least is that the marines salted even though we still got decimated during this test round (even though we ended up winning by a hair width)

[dasWurmtMich]

Could we get a tackle mutator? Would be nice for tackle to be actually reliable again.

[KingPhilipIII]

Start adding penalties to mutators. It'll maintain the customization feeling while keeping it balanced. Wanna run fast as fuck? Well maybe embracing your inner runner causes carapace thinning and now you're a bit more fragile. Or maybe extra armor slows you down.

It'll still let people diversify without being too crippled or too strong.

[Corocan]

It'd probably be easier to have a discussion if the Devs would also post the numbers behind the mutations (i.e., How much more HP? How much more Damage? How much faster?). I think that will make it easier to corroborate a consensus or justify anything we observe during the tests.

[NeatoNito]

I feel like the balancing is still skewed into the Xeno's Favor, but its not nearly as bad as it was on the first test.
Changing from flat boosts to Percentile Boosts was a good thing and restricting the ammount you can upgrade also seems to have cut the power so far.
All in all it feels Good to be Xeno.
If this was planned to make xenos power positive, You've done great so far. A few more number tweaks may be all you need to balance it to be Healthy.

[Simo94]

pls add better tackle mutator thx

[KingPhilipIII]

pls add better tackle mutator thx

+10000000000000000