Updates discussion thread

[Jonesome]

I’ve always been a slow clicker myself, so this update actually works in my favor to out-robust the fast fingered autists.

[Surrealistik]

Clicking seems worse than before the clicking update in general. Chemistry isn't as smooth, but I'll play a few more rounds.

Chemistry is definitely less smooth/more clunky.

[TheDonkified]

Yep, everything's noticeably clunkier now. Not fun in medbay, where it's literally just clicking. Hopefully clicking will find that sweet spot where it isn't spam fast but it also isn't as clunky as it is now.

[LocalizedDownpour]

The M56D seems a viable pick now, and two sentries side by side seem like they'd be able to wreck some havoc is placed right. Think the first Aliens movie.

[Surrealistik]

The M56D seems a viable pick now, and two sentries side by side seem like they'd be able to wreck some havoc is placed right. Think the first Aliens movie.

If the M56D is viable (which I would certainly not conclude at this point) it's exclusively because the Sentry was made worse.

[LocalizedDownpour]

If the M56D is viable (which I would certainly not conclude at this point) it's exclusively because the Sentry was made worse.

Well apparently the damage is buffed on it, not sure if that means it was put to Sentry levels of damage. or if it's actually going to bring the pain. I'm interested to see machine gun nests for people to operate on the fob or on front line gun lines.

[Surrealistik]

Well apparently the damage is buffed on it, not sure if that means it was put to Sentry levels of damage. or if it's actually going to bring the pain. I'm interested to see machine gun nests for people to operate on the fob or on front line gun lines.

I doubt it will see extensive frontline use after an initial experimentation period.

Why?

No IFF, insane FF damage, and the firepower it brings to bear does not exceed that of marines with rifles that could fit in its firing lane.

[LocalizedDownpour]

I could see them being used for fob defense at the very least over sentries, given you can have anyone man them.

[Surrealistik]

Welp, with the removal of the 360 mode, sentries got thoroughly trashed:

#1: Can't leave a sentry alone; a sentry needs to always be watched. Usually not a problem with FOB if it's manned (though potentially an issue with the sprawling FOBs that are common today with all their flanking approaches; definitely a problem if it has a skeleton crew), a problem anywhere else.
#2: Can't bait/trap benos by feigning directional mode (though this was more a consequence of the added spinning animation).
#3: Substantially diminished frontline utility, especially in the case of fronts prone to flanking. The value of the sentry as a guardian for the triage/resupply areas of a push has been destroyed since these don't typically have a strong marine presence, relying on 360 mode + barricades. Marines will need to devote more people to defense of the triage/resupply outposts (if they ever actually do since everyone wants to shoot aliens until they can't) resulting in a weakening of their actual offensive.
#4: Engineers more bound to their gun than ever before while this was already a problem for diligent engineers who cared about actually doing their job. _Especially_ problematic with sentries at the front where the probability of flanking attacks is much higher.
#5: Engineers cannot rely on sentries for overwatch while building up defenses.
#6: In general more marines will need to be diverted to defense from offense, which compounds issues with bog down and trench warfare facing the game as a whole that have underwritten substantial increases in average round times lately (prompted by the medical update; hopefully the medvac is tackling this).

[mizolo]

Yeah, they really HAVE trashed the sentries.

#1: As you said, engies can't rely on it for protection/overwatch without CONSTANTLY having to check it, or their surroundings because PFC's are off getting face-fucked on the front.

#2: It does much less damage, and even less hit % chance, which completely fuckin' nerfs it to shit despite it being able to shoot 10 rounds of basically revolver ammo (Shit that does decent damage but hardly hits the broad side of a fucking barn 50% of the time)

#3: You now need probably 6-7 marines per fort/FOB instead of 3, practically fucking CRIPPLING the attacking force and the marines in general because of #1 and #2.




To be honest, I honestly don't know what the fuck admins are doing or what they're even trying to accomplish by doing this. I don't know if it's because of the "perfect imbalance" thing, which is probably their excuse, but ...


I really don't know what is happening. There is marine nerf after marine nerf being delivered, and the occasional super-xeno-buff.

[Symbiosis]

The sentry nerf was coming for a while.

Marines would horde sentries for the SD defense attempting to stack 3-4 in a small room with a single chokepoint.

Then Marines would leave them at unmanned checkpoints and hide mines under floor tiles, meaning a single claymore would kill any Xeno who wandered close without any Marine involvement.

This wouldn't be a problem if we had a ton more Xeno players. The sad fact is we don't. Often there'll be 5-10 inactive Larva mid-late round. Losing a Xeno is painful and there's no defib or surgery to bring back a single misstep from a Xeno player.

[Surrealistik]

The sentry nerf was coming for a while.

Marines would horde sentries for the SD defense attempting to stack 3-4 in a small room with a single chokepoint.

Then Marines would leave them at unmanned checkpoints and hide mines under floor tiles, meaning a single claymore would kill any Xeno who wandered close without any Marine involvement.

This wouldn't be a problem if we had a ton more Xeno players. The sad fact is we don't. Often there'll be 5-10 inactive Larva mid-late round. Losing a Xeno is painful and there's no defib or surgery to bring back a single misstep from a Xeno player.

#1: SD defenses don't really happen anymore and when they do, it's a draw for the marines at best anyways.

#2: Marines should be ensuring sentry survival innately given how expensive and valuable they were.

#3: Fully automated non-temp defenses were rare, and xeno deaths from them were largely a matter of xeno incompetence and recklessness, not SGs being too strong. Not a justification for nerfing sentries at all; you don't punish marines and weaken their core tools in fundamental ways because of beno idiocy.

[mizolo]

YES, MY POINT EXACTLY!

Xenos should be the ones adapting, not being adapted upon.

When they do something stupid, admins I feel literally nerf the ENTIRE marine force just to help them.

[Gnorse]

These last few alien/marine updates have been a bit meh.
As others mentioned, even if the queen is supposed to be the best xeno, you can't just make it a literal deathsquad.
If you DO want to keep the queen as OP as it is already, at least make it so that a new queen can't evolve until like 40 minutes after previous one's death.

[Symbiosis]

#1: SD defenses don't really happen anymore and when they do, it's a draw for the marines at best anyways.

#2: Marines should be ensuring sentry survival innately given how expensive and valuable they were.

#3: Fully automated non-temp defenses were rare, and xeno deaths from them were largely a matter of xeno incompetence and recklessness, not SGs being too strong. Not a justification for nerfing sentries at all; you don't punish marines and weaken their core tools in fundamental ways because of beno idiocy.

#3 I can't right click every fucking piece of trash on the map. Hidden mines mercing Ancient T2's shouldn't be as easy as being AFK or absent, placing a new mine and removing the dead Xeno body. If I'm dying to a hidden mine it should be because a Marine is gunning me down, not a sentry on the edge of the screen while I'm stunned until I'm dead. I'm not an incompetent Xeno player, far from it. I have been vocal against updates I think were undesirable.

I fully believe Sentries needed an adjustment. Frankly, I'd even go so far as to REQUIRE late joiners to play as Xeno. Maybe that would reduce the four and five hour round which I'm sure nobody enjoys. I know I personally don't like spending an hour and a half killing lone marines on Ice as they look to end the round. But I'm sure as hell not going to bash my "face" against an autism FOB while Marines turtle and refuse to leave when they outnumber us 5 to 1.

[Surrealistik]

#3 I can't right click every fucking piece of trash on the map. Hidden mines mercing Ancient T2's shouldn't be as easy as being AFK or absent, placing a new mine and removing the dead Xeno body. If I'm dying to a hidden mine it should be because a Marine is gunning me down, not a sentry on the edge of the screen while I'm stunned until I'm dead. I'm not an incompetent Xeno player, far from it. I have been vocal against updates I think were undesirable.

I fully believe Sentries needed an adjustment. Frankly, I'd even go so far as to REQUIRE late joiners to play as Xeno. Maybe that would reduce the four and five hour round which I'm sure nobody enjoys. I know I personally don't like spending an hour and a half killing lone marines on Ice as they look to end the round. But I'm sure as hell not going to bash my "face" against an autism FOB while Marines turtle and refuse to leave when they outnumber us 5 to 1.

Last I checked, sentries don't shoot downed benos unless that's been changed, even if you're unadvisably lazy about checking out junkpiles near marine fortifications so you can literally just get up and pounce away.

That said, again, fully automated, long-term defenses aren't common at all. Even if they _did_ shoot benos when they're down, a corner case like this doesn't somehow warrant fundamentally nerfing the shit out of sentry guns; at worst just give them reduced accuracy vs downed benos or have them not fire on downed benos at all.

[Bronimin]

From another thread:

Logs for January: Marine wins: 104, Xeno Wins: 37

Marine nerfs incoming

[LocalizedDownpour]

I saw Feweh post this in another thread, but the Marine wins for January were like...100+ marines for victories and half that for Alien wins.
Second on that, putting the 'perfect imbalance' thing aside, marine are working alot less hard for wins these days I'm finding, seeing as aliens have lost the frontline queen, the only time you see a queen is if ayys are on their heels or it's a big push on the aliens side and I think the dev staff want to fix that and I can agree with them there. I'm not saying that sentries themselves needed a nerf, but SOMETHING needed to happen to push the favor at LEAST back to even, not a 75% Marine victory rate on high-pop, and maybe pulling more marines back for defense is that answer. Also you don't HAVE to pull more marines back for defense, but you will be playing much more risky and the xenos can exploit that.

As for lore? I think the sentries were only forward facing regardless but I might be wrong there. And having seen the sentries in action if you have a xeno hit a mine and get hit by even half those shots you're in for a bad time, or have two next to eachother you could hold a hall way with those alone...

[Symbiosis]

Last I checked, sentries don't shoot downed benos unless that's been changed, even if you're unadvisably lazy about checking out junkpiles near marine fortifications so you can literally just get up and pounce away.

That said, again, fully automated, long-term defenses aren't common at all. Even if they _did_ shoot benos when they're down, a corner case like this doesn't somehow warrant fundamentally nerfing the shit out of sentry guns; at worst just give them reduced accuracy vs downed benos or have them not fire on downed benos at all.

They did, previous to this nerf. It was scummy as hell, but legit. I'm glad it was changed. I don't mind dying to Marines, but getting caught by a floor tile mine and sentry gun is low effort.

[mizolo]

Yeah, now that I know that I've been mis-informed about a lot of shit, these updates are

INFINITELY more tolerable.

[BadApple]

Clicking is painful now. Gearing up takes so much longer, especially because I click to do something, move on, and then have to go back because I didn't actually put that mag away. Good that I can't insta-dice xenos though (once I almost died stabbing an afk larva because of acid splash-back) wish we could have it back without the melee speed.

Clearing resin stuff or breaking fences or whatever is painful too - used to be fun with our spamming.

I haven't played with new turrets. Before they were super deadly with the downside of being vulnerable to an varied and co-ordinate hoard - but even then it took all their attention to kill. I like the idea of shifting to more dakka, hopefully they actually sometimes run out of ammo too (50 bursts now, rather than 100)

[Surrealistik]

I saw Feweh post this in another thread, but the Marine wins for January were like...100+ marines for victories and half that for Alien wins.
Second on that, putting the 'perfect imbalance' thing aside, marine are working alot less hard for wins these days I'm finding, seeing as aliens have lost the frontline queen, the only time you see a queen is if ayys are on their heels or it's a big push on the aliens side and I think the dev staff want to fix that and I can agree with them there. I'm not saying that sentries themselves needed a nerf, but SOMETHING needed to happen to push the favor at LEAST back to even, not a 75% Marine victory rate on high-pop, and maybe pulling more marines back for defense is that answer. Also you don't HAVE to pull more marines back for defense, but you will be playing much more risky and the xenos can exploit that.

As for lore? I think the sentries were only forward facing regardless but I might be wrong there. And having seen the sentries in action if you have a xeno hit a mine and get hit by even half those shots you're in for a bad time, or have two next to eachother you could hold a hall way with those alone...

I'm pretty sure sentries weren't responsible for these wins though.

They did, previous to this nerf. It was scummy as hell, but legit. I'm glad it was changed. I don't mind dying to Marines, but getting caught by a floor tile mine and sentry gun is low effort.

So why utterly gut sentries instead of addressing the actual problem here by having them not fire on downed benos or have them fire at said benos with substantially reduced accuracy?

[LocalizedDownpour]

I'm pretty sure sentries weren't responsible for these wins though.

I'm not saying Sentries are to blame, but I think that this was was what they picked for the nerf. They were out to nerf SOMETHING, sentries are just what they picked. Speaking as someone with a foggy insight to how these things go being former staff, this is my educated guess.

[Surrealistik]

I'm not saying Sentries are to blame, but I think that this was was what they picked for the nerf. They were out to nerf SOMETHING, sentries are just what they picked. Speaking as someone with a foggy insight to how these things go being former staff, this is my educated guess.

So are you saying it was selection by dart board?

I will note that it does seem to be part of an effort to make the M56D worth a comparative shit, largely by nerfing the crap out of the Sentry, rather than improving the M56D.

[Ghodere]

Relevant image to discussion of claymores- dastardly placement. Truly all but invisible.