The State of the Game: Discussion

[Nyeshivuu]

17 minutes in and S T E A M R O L L. Command was shit though.

[Draegonlore]

I understand that balance is a fine tuned process on CM but you're not going to stall the amount of salt marines will pour out now. I'm not saying slap dash a band-aid on the damn to stall the flow but doing something as maybe a test on CM like boosting damage back once on a round just to see what happens or what the response is. Might make the players feel better while you try to find the more permanent solution.

[NoahKirchner]

I think the barricade update is a huge step in the right direction, I assume it just needs tweaking from there an I feel like that would alleviate a lot of the frustrations of the playerbase if you can bring FOBs back to being feasible again, and now they'll look neat.

[TheDonkified]

Barricades update was actually a breathe of fresh air, even though there is still a huge problem of xenos steamrolling marines. The round where marines actually won in LV with the update and forced the xenos to run away and delay for about 30 minutes was so much more fun than the stale xeno steamroll.

[TehSpoderman]

The DS update is HUGE. I absolutely love it.

[Tidomann]

Oh god, Looking forward to seeing some sick fire missions.

[TheDonkified]

The DS update is HUGE. I absolutely love it.

It looks awesome. I'm just hoping it functions as awesomely as it looks.

[K0NFL1QT]

The defenses update was a big plus, but evidently not enough to even out the win/loss ratio again. That said, at the same time marines silently lost the false walls which they used to cheaply partition defenses, and girder costs were increased to 8. But for the purpose of defenses, sandbags and barricades don't get rushed right through by Crushers anymore, and barbed wire addons seems to stop other things just running right through, so those are very good addons that result in much more viable defenses if used correctly. I really like that the plasteel barricades can be folded to allow easy passage in the manner that false walls used to, which is great, but that 'ghetto-door' function now requires plasteel instead of metal.

The following are other issues I have identified that are contributing to the marines massive loss rate;
Too many round start monkeys. This gives aliens all the population base they'll ever need, so they focus solely on killing marines as fast as possible.
Xeno recovery speed. And I don't mean specifically their health regeneration. Consider that a Ravager can charge you and, if you don't get killed outright, a marine will be out of the fight for about twenty minutes or more if they can make it back to Almeyer for surgery. But if, in that same scenario, the Ravager isn't able to make a quick, clean escape and nearly dies, it will be back on the front line in maybe two minutes with zero repercussions. There needs to be real consequences to getting injured for Xenos. Ideally, they would have coded limbs that can be injured, causing permanent debuffs at set damage percentiles, but failing that then a simple incremental speed decrease tied to damage taken might work; the more injured you are, the slower you are. This wouldn't need to be much of a speed decrease, but it would at least put some risk back into openly engaging a lot of marines.
Crushers. I'd say they are too tough, but they are meant to be tough so I'll set that aside. The fact that they so easily hand out crippling, if not eventually fatal injuries, is bothersome... but at least those injuries are generally treatable if you don't get outright killed. Those aside, top speed charge is too fast. They can cross a whole screen before a marine can take one step out of the way, and can seemingly change direction without losing their speed. Also, hitting Stomp should kill a Crushers momentum so it becomes a tactical choice.

The idea of the DS update seems cool, but we'll see how it actually affects play over the next couple days. My gut says it will be a cool but not game changing addition, but I'll researve full judgement until seeing it in action.

[Monoo]

Sick and half asleep right now but all I have to say is, and this is not directed at anyone in particular, is people need to calm down, and be patient. Balance and game updates are tricky things to get right. Change is a process, and we can stay at one "comfortable" spot, or advance. There will be hurdles, there will be times an update fucks everything up, but as always, it will be worked out over time.

I like to try and look at the big picture. While an update that changes a lot may immediatly fuck up the balance, what is the overall feel and change? For example removing T3 stuns? I liked the idea, but now marines need a new counter to fall back on. Personally I think rockets should always stun, anyways. The tiny detail can be refined later. Anyways this is a period of a lot of changes, but the fix is not as simple as "Nerf health across the board! Revert this! Stop that!" Sure, you 'could' do that, but it's a knee jerk reaction that can mess things up in the long run.

Look, the devs are part of the community, they play the game as well, the #1 goal is a fun experience for all sides, but things take time, and I simply say, relax and have patience.

This was somewhat a response at a lot of the salt and drama building up in the community these past weeks, and I had to get it out. Have a good one everyone, time to go down more meds for my sick.

Look, I get it. Devs are working on fixing the balance issues. That's not the point of the thread, really.

The more the server changes, the closer we get to the death of ROLEPLAY. Regardless of whether this week's game-breaking balance change is fixed in a timely manner, there's no more stories. The gameplay is different in the name of the balance. It's apparently more fun to roleplay a marine loss, but in designing the game for a marine loss you take away the uncertainty and the fun that made spontaneous roleplay happen in the first place. People already know they're going to die in a boring way when they start the round. You can see it, there's no marine optimism or interest in the future. No desire to get to know their comrades and make a great new strategy. Everything is superficial because everyone knows they're intended to die for the sake of the narrative, so they don't RP.

[K0NFL1QT]

... No desire to get to know their comrades and make a great new strategy.

Regarding that at least; every new, unconventional tactic marines discover either gets immediately 'fixed' or results in admins threatening/handing out punishments, so it's no wonder the desire to be tactically creative is dead.

[Garrison]

I'm liking all the new toys Marines have gotten.

[Nick123q23]

I really, really love the new dropship update and the new powerloaders.

[Garrison]

I logged in to a round at 1:30ish today, found the MT's tinkering with the Normandy and the pilot was having a brief dispute about how long it was taking. Tried to contact my squad but there was nothing but static, worried I rush down on the Alamo, only to find an FOB that actually expanded outside Nexus with multiple holding points. Sure there were dead marines everywhere, but there were also dead Aliens. I went to patrol the area and ended up tagging along with Renomaki as we burned out the remaining weed infestations in the colony, until the aliens assaulted Cargo dome, queen went down and the Aliens were crushed. Then OOC/Radio exploded with Overjoyed marines, although I was late to the party, it certainly seemed like the round was a hard fought one.


TL:DR version: When you see a giant FOB, and Marines aren't depressed, despite seeing dead bodies everywhere, you know there is something improving.

[Reuben Owen]

The Almayer fights are horribly Xeno-biased. I mean it is the Marines home turf, shouldn't they be a little tougher there? It doesn't help that half the people who've survived up to that point go into a cryo chamber and smirk to themselves. They could be fighting the good fight dammit! ERTs do not help enough to make a difference, either.

I think it'd be cool if Marines could powerloader spam like they used to. It was only a problem before due to the way the dropship worked and it's design. The power loaders literally waited 1 square away from xenos, pushed in and trapped them all inside while squeezing them to death. But with the crash mechanics they can't lie in wait and they're hella unwieldy to use when moving longer distances. They could make good group guards for the self destruct or medical, since there's not nearly enough time to set up any decent defences. I love the new barricades though. Almost killed myself slashing one, oops.

[Mr.Smooooth]

Powerloaders could actually be decent if xenos couldn't unbuckle marines from them.

[Reuben Owen]

Powerloaders could actually be decent if xenos couldn't unbuckle marines from them.

suggest it

[Ikmalmn]

The Almayer fights are horribly Xeno-biased. I mean it is the Marines home turf, shouldn't they be a little tougher there?

Almayer fights are designed and supposed to give a 99% win rate for the xeno's. Unless the aliens are literally outnumbered by a atrocius amount of marines (which they can still win) there is little hope for them. It's basically a final and last stand.

Hence why a distress beacon is also automatically combined with the SD and escape pods.

[TheMaskedMan2]

Once marines lost the planet they basically lost, and the Almayer boarding is just a bit of a finale, it's not something you are supposed to ever be expected to win, the main fight is on the planet, if you lose the planet, you pretty much lost the round. Not that it matters.

[Garrison]

The Almayer fights are horribly Xeno-biased. I mean it is the Marines home turf, shouldn't they be a little tougher there? It doesn't help that half the people who've survived up to that point go into a cryo chamber and smirk to themselves. They could be fighting the good fight dammit! ERTs do not help enough to make a difference, either.

I think it'd be cool if Marines could powerloader spam like they used to. It was only a problem before due to the way the dropship worked and it's design. The power loaders literally waited 1 square away from xenos, pushed in and trapped them all inside while squeezing them to death. But with the crash mechanics they can't lie in wait and they're hella unwieldy to use when moving longer distances. They could make good group guards for the self destruct or medical, since there's not nearly enough time to set up any decent defences. I love the new barricades though. Almost killed myself slashing one, oops.

I think that was the intention of making it so a dropship crashes into a random spot in the ship. So that way, Marines are unable to prepare an appropriate defense, giving the Xeno's room to maneuver and fortify their positions before the Marines charge at them with everything they got (or vice versa if the Marines are on their last legs, which is usually the case).

Gameplay wise, it seems balanced to me. My only two complaints is how difficult it is to hunt down the last few surviving Xenos or how they can make the whole ship deck pitch black and weed ridden in almost an instant compared to the planet.

[Swagile]

Problem is, the barricade update didn't solve anything as the xenos adapted.

Runners, hunters, and Ravagers can pounce / charge past ALL barricades. They don't do damage, BUT, they get past said barricades. This isn't as much of a problem for Ravagers as now the Ravager is stuck in your barricade with no exit until the Charge cooldown is over, but for Runners and Hunters who have a quick pounce cool down its a nightmare. Especially when you consider the fact that a swarm of these pouncing past your defenses to destroy your turrets / injure your men can seriously fuck up any reason to actually make a FOB, since the whole point of barricades was to keep aliens out until they broke through.

[TheDonkified]

Yeah. Barricades with barbed wire should be blocking pounces at the very least, but they don't. Lone people defending FOBs think that they're safe behind lines of barb-wire barricades, when it's really just a false sense of security since any runner and hunter can pounce through without any real issue or damage.

[misto]

the new dropship stuff is very interesting and cool, however much like the orbital bombardment, most xenos are too attentive, cautious or mobile to get caught by such tricks. a zoomed out boiler would be the one at greatest risk. xeno fortifications are also generally flimsy and not good targets for that amount of firepower.

the barricade update makes things look much nicer than the sloppy collection of racks and tables we used to rely on(except the wooden barricade, which looks out of place) but doesnt seem to do a lot to hinder the enemy. i guess they have to pounce over things to gut you now rather than freely running through most of them? and they get scratched back if they try to scratch barbed barricades? but barricade cleanup usually comes after killing/chasing off the marines anyways, so the injury sustained is a non factor, and you can just puke acid onto it and let it melt on its own if you dont want to get scratched.

runners are hilarious lately because theyve figured out they can be safer and get better results by zooming around groups of marines to provoke friendly fire rather than actually pouncing or scratching anyone

crushers seem to have fallen out of favor, how sad, they were cute rhinos

[Karmac]

If the targeting binos had night vision that'd make them infinitely better, the laser sprite is also a bit large and slow to actually target at the moment, meaning if you don't cover it's use with a smoke grenade any and all xenos are gonna notice it. Not being able to target moving xenos is also a huge downside to the designator.

[Rocco Ward]

Regarding that at least; every new, unconventional tactic marines discover either gets immediately 'fixed' or results in admins threatening/handing out punishments, so it's no wonder the desire to be tactically creative is dead.

This is why I quit CM. Ever time marines learn a new tactic that gives them a advantage over xenos it gets nerfed into the ground. Xenos should learn to adapt better. Actually scout properly, demine areas using crushers, send hunters on sabateour missions, etc.

[shyshadow]

This is why I quit CM. Ever time marines learn a new tactic that gives them a advantage over xenos it gets nerfed into the ground. Xenos should learn to adapt better. Actually scout properly, demine areas using crushers, send hunters on sabateour missions, etc.

You quit CM? But I liked you...I miss you :C