From fun rounds to seeing rounds fade into the next

[MattAtlas]

I also feel like, for some reason, somehow, there's been a massive braindrain on the xeno side. Like at some point a large amount of xeno mains or just people who played xeno sometimes and are robust just up and stopped playing. This has cause a big problem of just waves of stupid xenos existing and draining the hives larva supply. And it's not like you can idiot proof the xenos much more then they already are especially when half of them are incredibly cheesy strong as is and any buff would also just serve to make the robust xenos even stronger as well. So I've got no clue how to fix that one.

This is completely true. A lot of good Xeno players have just stopped playing Xeno because 99% of the time it's just a Marine stomp. Between bald Queens being incredibly more common right now and the roundstart larva nerf basically singlehandedly driving Xeno winrates into the mud, it's not surprising that said Xeno mains have just fluctuated to Marines. It's just not fun playing Xeno anymore when you have to deal with shitty Queens, not getting a roundstart Xeno slot and, hell, probably all around Xeno incompetency.

Marine victories are getting stale, yeah. But I don't think it's changing anytime soon.

[kooarbiter]

The issue with slowing down the meta is that marines cannot sustain long operations now. The Req change, while necessary, makes it so the game regards marines who push fast and hard, and punishes those who are slow. You cannot build massive fortifications anymore for long drawn out battles, there is not enough metal and points. There is barely enough material for a basic FOB and some forward outposts. Sentries are still terrible so you cannot hold areas as easily anymore. If you arent pushing, you are dead as a marine. If you are on the defensive, most likely the round will stretch to three plus hours and end with a marine loss. It also seems really difficult to activate the SD these days (As in trigger the evac and SD device), making last stand more dull.

Coordination among the Xenos seems at an all time low. When I play xeno, they just bleed off hunters and runners like crazy, oftentimes in areas of the map not on the frontlines. This lack of coordination, coupled with marines flanking more and being highly aggressive has lead to xenos basically being on the defensive immediately and getting tossed around. There is really no easy way to fix this, since this is down to the players who are playing the aliens being bad at adapting to any tactic that isn't "Send and isolated squad in to go die on the far end of the map". That is basically it.

To be fair the bit about bleeding runners ha always been true, that's nothing new

[Blade2000Br]

Also :

Why not systematically adding a third party on med/highpop round ?

A fireteam of 6 to a full squad of CLF/UPP deploying just 5 minutes before the marines, at 1220. (Mostly on Ice and BR, as those are quite bigmaps)

They can be troublesome for both sides Xenos and USCM and acts as a wild card. Getting rekted, doing great flank, being a good trigger for admin intervention (Objective fulfilled like sabotage or espionage, resulting in additional reinforcements).

Our playerbase is the issue here.

We can't allow ourselves to do something fun like that, because marines WILL mess it up badly. If no admin get's in the middle, the playerbase will mess shit up and will end up with people more angered/saddened than it's worth the trouble.

We just can't do anything with the way marines are...marines.

[Tigroon]

Our playerbase is the issue here.

We can't allow ourselves to do something fun like that, because marines WILL mess it up badly. If no admin get's in the middle, the playerbase will mess shit up and will end up with people more angered/saddened than it's worth the trouble.

We just can't do anything with the way marines are...marines.

Your playerbase is geared primarily towards combat. Perhaps if you found a way to distract the marines with Combat, things might go a bit more smoothly. Take this for example.

Xenos and Marines spawned in as usual. Players taken from the observer groupings as there usually are plenty therein during Event rounds to use, to populate colonists. Colony is spotless and clean, marines land to find all is well, except for issues with the Generator. Xenos stay out of sight, mayhap one or two colonists are abducted and go missing via Xenos, and all goes well until the fog lifts. Xenos advance with no marine guard to block their advance across the river, hit Hydro, Req, and then Engineering. If Xenos have yet to be spotted, lights and power going out will be a good enough indication that shit just hit the fan. Marines must now struggle to form a defensive perimeter around the Nexus, while also evac'ing the civilians colonyside.

If things go well thus far, add some spice to the mix. Scientist raises the Command frequency somehow, tells them he has information concerning the creatures attacking. Have scientist in the well sealed science area, or in the hellishly hard to melt into dome. Marine team must be sent to retrieve the asset. Game goes from there.

[Blade2000Br]

Your playerbase is geared primarily towards combat. Perhaps if you found a way to distract the marines with Combat, things might go a bit more smoothly. Take this for example.

Xenos and Marines spawned in as usual. Players taken from the observer groupings as there usually are plenty therein during Event rounds to use, to populate colonists. Colony is spotless and clean, marines land to find all is well, except for issues with the Generator. Xenos stay out of sight, mayhap one or two colonists are abducted and go missing via Xenos, and all goes well until the fog lifts. Xenos advance with no marine guard to block their advance across the river, hit Hydro, Req, and then Engineering. If Xenos have yet to be spotted, lights and power going out will be a good enough indication that shit just hit the fan. Marines must now struggle to form a defensive perimeter around the Nexus, while also evac'ing the civilians colonyside.

If things go well thus far, add some spice to the mix. Scientist raises the Command frequency somehow, tells them he has information concerning the creatures attacking. Have scientist in the well sealed science area, or in the hellishly hard to melt into dome. Marine team must be sent to retrieve the asset. Game goes from there.

wouldn't work. Marines would know that xenos are on the other side, they would still reinforce hydro, make a FOB, build defenses everywhere. EVEN though the civillians said nothing is wrong. Marines will do that because it's on their nature to prepare for the attack of xenos on LV. So this event wouldn't work at all.

We also tried a event where there was nothing happening in the colony. Marines dropped, built a FOB, made fortifications on the Hydro and when fog dropped, Despite orders from staff to not move up, marines moved up regardless. When they found there were no Xenos or anything, they started killing theirselves, mutinied agaisn't command and basically became a shithole.

We simply can't make too much complex events with our playerbase.

[ExGame]

wouldn't work. Marines would know that xenos are on the other side, they would still reinforce hydro, make a FOB, build defenses everywhere. EVEN though the civillians said nothing is wrong. Marines will do that because it's on their nature to prepare for the attack of xenos on LV. So this event wouldn't work at all.

We also tried a event where there was nothing happening in the colony. Marines dropped, built a FOB, made fortifications on the Hydro and when fog dropped, Despite orders from staff to not move up, marines moved up regardless. When they found there were no Xenos or anything, they started killing theirselves, mutinied agaisn't command and basically became a shithole.

We simply can't make too much complex events with our playerbase.

Same thing with event yesterday where UPP infiltrated the Almayer, the event was that FTL stopped for no reason (UPP weren't even announced), as soon as that happened, marines still geared up and got their attachments, half the marines started building autism forts onboard the Almayer just 10 minutes after the req rush. Alpha built their autism fort in the chow hall and began threatening anyone to enter (there was still no threat announced). Once the spies were announced they went apeshit and began threatening anyone, and then killed 2 MPs telling them to not build it which ended in admin intervention.

[SolarMacharius]

If you give the marines a round where next to nothing happens for thirty minutes, what do you expect from them? Marines need action, because outside of combat there is very little to do in game. Engineering has nothing to do besides make forts and occasionally do a boring and tedious mini game to fix the engine, chemistry is heavily neutered and most of the stuff you can make is illegal/useless. There is no cooking, no botany, no science or virology. And what little there is the PFC's cannot do due to how skills work.

CM's main appeal is combat. People play marines to kill aliens or assist in killing the aliens. There is very little to do outside of combat besides supplying the marines with equipment or patching them up if they get wounded. If you have a round where there is no combat, then pretty much 98% of the playerbase has nothing to do for hours at a time. There is a difference between complex events and railroading where nothing happens for hours. Its actually remarkable how long marines keep it together on extended rounds when they have nothing to do. The marines are building forts and defenses since they are bored and its better then doing nothing.

Basically, people play for combat. They might play to RP before and after combat, but the majority play for the combat. If there is no combat, and nothing else interesting to do outside of combat, then the marines will begin to act out since the only other thing to do is alt tab and wait for the round to end.

[Toroic]

Mannnnnn this thread depressed me. I guess, while I've been having fun lately... I guess it has been really generic, repetative, and just... dull. A boring kind of fun.

Marines are winning to often. It's just like back when we had that time when marines were never winning and it felt pointless.

And what sucks, instead of giving the xenos more tools to defeat the marines, instead the devs just buff the stats of the xenos and remove or heavily nerf things for the marines. Everyone got that hair in their ass over AP but here we are, AP and cargo nerfed, marines still just steam rolling, now just with less cool stuff floating around spicing the round up.

I also feel like, for some reason, somehow, there's been a massive braindrain on the xeno side. Like at some point a large amount of xeno mains or just people who played xeno sometimes and are robust just up and stopped playing. This has cause a big problem of just waves of stupid xenos existing and draining the hives larva supply. And it's not like you can idiot proof the xenos much more then they already are especially when half of them are incredibly cheesy strong as is and any buff would also just serve to make the robust xenos even stronger as well. So I've got no clue how to fix that one.

Honestly I don't know how to fix any of this really. I just know how to complain.

I've been saying for... years at this point that actually playing xeno is an annoying roll of the dice. If you're around at roundstart back when they had more starting larva it was like a 50/50 shot whether you would be able to get in and play without 20+ minutes of waiting, which also usually determined whether you had a shot at being a T3 xeno. Odds are worse now, and there's never been any ability to do amazing plays and then be recognized for that later with very few exceptions. There's no glory in playing xeno because unless you're the queen (even more RNG dependent) no one in the game ever knows who you are. It's inconvenient because you might need to wait 20+ minutes at roundstart, or simply not be able to join lategame if there aren't any larva.

Marine side is:

-Convenient to play
-People learn your name when you're playing regularly/make robust moves
-You get to know and befriend people

Xeno side is:

-Inconvenient to play
-Never get to know anyone without significant effort
-Mechanically dumbed down and marines constantly talk about how easy they are to play (aka idiot-proof)


People underestimate heavily how much having a *community* is what keeps people coming back and playing CM, and xenos have to work a lot harder to develop a sense of community since it's anti-supported in-game. People have suggested things like unique and static alphanumeric codes, seeing ckeys in hive status, all sorts of ways to make playing xeno be less thankless and faceless but they haven't been done.

For me personally I enjoyed having to make smart and robust moves early in the round to eventually become a boss battle for marines, but now that marines are more organized and instead of fast and efficient macros xenos have slow and awkward ui buttons, crusher being nerfed into uselessness, and the general difficulty in dealing with a full marine squad without a queen helping I'm not shocked at all that so few people are still playing xeno.

Marines can still be fun to play when you lose. You talk to people and joke around and then potentially have memorable glorious moments as you make your last stand.

Xenomorphs when your team is losing plays like this:

1) Gather monkeys and then wait for fog to drop

2) Watch xenos die every 2 minutes, followed by the queen trying to help and getting picked off

3) Try not to die as your team, which no longer can communicate unless on the same screen, gets picked off while unable to evolve or coordinate.

There's no reason to talk because your identity changes every round and even if you did make a friend you can't find them again without metacommunication.

Playing xeno was something people did *despite* the inconvenience and lack of recognition. With so much power given to the queen and taken from elsewhere, and no way to know whether that queen is robust or not, every game becomes a succession of dice rolls that are unsatisfying to lose because there's not roleplay or persistence or recognition to fall back on.

It's not shocking xeno mains are playing less, it's shocking there were as many as half a dozen regulars on at a time at all.

[kooarbiter]

If you give the marines a round where next to nothing happens for thirty minutes, what do you expect from them? Marines need action, because outside of combat there is very little to do in game. Engineering has nothing to do besides make forts and occasionally do a boring and tedious mini game to fix the engine, chemistry is heavily neutered and most of the stuff you can make is illegal/useless. There is no cooking, no botany, no science or virology. And what little there is the PFC's cannot do due to how skills work.

CM's main appeal is combat. People play marines to kill aliens or assist in killing the aliens. There is very little to do outside of combat besides supplying the marines with equipment or patching them up if they get wounded. If you have a round where there is no combat, then pretty much 98% of the playerbase has nothing to do for hours at a time. There is a difference between complex events and railroading where nothing happens for hours. Its actually remarkable how long marines keep it together on extended rounds when they have nothing to do. The marines are building forts and defenses since they are bored and its better then doing nothing.

Basically, people play for combat. They might play to RP before and after combat, but the majority play for the combat. If there is no combat, and nothing else interesting to do outside of combat, then the marines will begin to act out since the only other thing to do is alt tab and wait for the round to end.

underrated comment, specifically the part about them not having any skills outside of combat, when you think about it the ship has maybe 3 or four main activities that don't involve 1-3 people and they almost all revolve around supporting the marines or interacting with command, but there isn't anything for reens to do out of combat, or people to do that doesn't have anything to do with the round besides maybe MT's making autism forts in maint, I know we are a combat heavy server but when you compare the variety of non combat activities with even a random vanilla ss13 server it's kind of sad, we need more stuff to do that isn't just go here shoot bad guy hurr durr, and we need to give marines specifically something to do that doesn't directly involve combat so they can fight boredom during extended/event rounds or when waiting to get healed or supplied at the alamo

[WinterClould]

At this point I feel like sacrifices need to be made in the devs vision for a "faceless hivemind" for the xeno players.

Far to many people don't play, or stop playing xenos because they'll never be recognized or cared about. While the attempts to stay commited to their vision is admirable, it's damaged the potential for the xeno team to grow and develop into anything more then the cycle of braindead nobody's dying constantly while a few strong kinda know vets watch in horror as there's nothing they can do to help. I feel like long term this is the reason we have such little RP or things you can do on the xeno side.

Even if it was something like just custom numbers it would go a long way. Custom names would be harder to regulate, and in the past I did vote against it, but at this point I feel it might be needed. Just to help xeno players form the community that they lack so badly.

[Mann handle]

► Show Spoiler

I've been saying for... years at this point that actually playing xeno is an annoying roll of the dice. If you're around at roundstart back when they had more starting larva it was like a 50/50 shot whether you would be able to get in and play without 20+ minutes of waiting, which also usually determined whether you had a shot at being a T3 xeno. Odds are worse now, and there's never been any ability to do amazing plays and then be recognized for that later with very few exceptions. There's no glory in playing xeno because unless you're the queen (even more RNG dependent) no one in the game ever knows who you are. It's inconvenient because you might need to wait 20+ minutes at roundstart, or simply not be able to join lategame if there aren't any larva.

Marine side is:

-Convenient to play
-People learn your name when you're playing regularly/make robust moves
-You get to know and befriend people

Xeno side is:

-Inconvenient to play
-Never get to know anyone without significant effort
-Mechanically dumbed down and marines constantly talk about how easy they are to play (aka idiot-proof)

People underestimate heavily how much having a *community* is what keeps people coming back and playing CM, and xenos have to work a lot harder to develop a sense of community since it's anti-supported in-game. People have suggested things like unique and static alphanumeric codes, seeing ckeys in hive status, all sorts of ways to make playing xeno be less thankless and faceless but they haven't been done.

For me personally I enjoyed having to make smart and robust moves early in the round to eventually become a boss battle for marines, but now that marines are more organized and instead of fast and efficient macros xenos have slow and awkward ui buttons, crusher being nerfed into uselessness, and the general difficulty in dealing with a full marine squad without a queen helping I'm not shocked at all that so few people are still playing xeno.

Marines can still be fun to play when you lose. You talk to people and joke around and then potentially have memorable glorious moments as you make your last stand.

Xenomorphs when your team is losing plays like this:

1) Gather monkeys and then wait for fog to drop

2) Watch xenos die every 2 minutes, followed by the queen trying to help and getting picked off

3) Try not to die as your team, which no longer can communicate unless on the same screen, gets picked off while unable to evolve or coordinate.

There's no reason to talk because your identity changes every round and even if you did make a friend you can't find them again without metacommunication.

Playing xeno was something people did *despite* the inconvenience and lack of recognition. With so much power given to the queen and taken from elsewhere, and no way to know whether that queen is robust or not, every game becomes a succession of dice rolls that are unsatisfying to lose because there's not roleplay or persistence or recognition to fall back on. It's not shocking xeno mains are playing less, it's shocking there were as many as half a dozen regulars on at a time at all.

This is completely true. A lot of good Xeno players have just stopped playing Xeno because 99% of the time it's just a Marine stomp. Between bald Queens being incredibly more common right now and the roundstart larva nerf basically singlehandedly driving Xeno winrates into the mud, it's not surprising that said Xeno mains have just fluctuated to Marines. It's just not fun playing Xeno anymore when you have to deal with shitty Queens, not getting a roundstart Xeno slot and, hell, probably all around Xeno incompetency.

Marine victories are getting stale, yeah. But I don't think it's changing anytime soon.

These two have nailed the issues with the xenos right on the head for the most part.

Xenos suffer from the fact that they are in a general sense, not fun to play. Queens hold too much power which in turn forces xenos to rely on the queen, the reliance on the queen becomes a crutch and that turns into a round winner or loser depending on that queen. But, to contradict the previous sentence, this is not the only issue. Xenos also suffer from goddamn awful T3 xenos and they really suffer when it comes down to really really bad T1's who just bleed larva because they are so bad. Yet the biggest problem when it comes to xenos is the lack of them actually being able to identify each other, not only can you not know who is whom, you can't even tell as to whether or not the are completely new all the way up to the point where they die or cause other xenos to die. It gets worse, when it comes to buffs or nerfs, xenos get a situation where they are over-buffed which breaks the balance completely. Or the get something they don't actually need, (the queen charge and spit for example), which then dampen the effect of the other xeno castes causing for more xenos to use crutches.

Are xenos idiot proof? well mechanically yes they have with the abilities which with teamwork they can perform some really damaging pushes. In practice however, a new queen with the baldest crown will cripple xenos in seconds. A fresh T 3/2/1 will most likely get themselves killed with nothing to show for it, causing levels of damage that can be either devastating or a minor annoyance if it's just the one doing it, multiply that by 5 and you'll have an issue right off the bat, if it's multiple T3s then the round could be considered over.

It gets worse when the xeno starting numbers were reduced, (I can see why it was done the whole giving free larva for every late join that marines had was causing xenos to fall into some really, really shitty habits that they then pushed on newer xenos, which when the effect was reduced and the starting xenos kept at the reduced levels), caused xenos to lose nearly constantly from the point of that update. Infact you can go all the way back to the ovi update and pick up on some really poor habits pushed by a minority of xenos that then caused them to be nerfed, a nerf that meant the xenos now have a black hole in their threat to marines. As of now, a xeno is only a threat to a new comer or a lone marine.

To fix this the xeno starting numbers need to return to their previous levels as a priority. Second the xenos actually need to be able to ID each other in terms of players and not a random number that changes each time you change caste let alone round. Third, the xenos need a rework that has limited levels of overbuffing in place. Fourth, the xeno community could do with some support in the forms of education (ie xeno dedicated mentors), too many newcomers to xeno will either never learn where they go wrong or what to improve, or never understand the point of their place in the hive.

I've seen as a marine too many young sentinels wandering around cluelessly, as a xeno I've either seen or died directly due to other xenos not knowing what they are doing in times of pushes due to really poor communication or incompetence.
I'm shocked to think that xeno mains are still trying to earn wins. While it's nice to actually see them as marines now and talk to them some times, it's a crying shame to see them leave a role they liked on the whole for it.

If you give the marines a round where next to nothing happens for thirty minutes, what do you expect from them? Marines need action, because outside of combat there is very little to do in game. Engineering has nothing to do besides make forts and occasionally do a boring and tedious mini game to fix the engine, chemistry is heavily neutered and most of the stuff you can make is illegal/useless. There is no cooking, no botany, no science or virology. And what little there is the PFC's cannot do due to how skills work.

CM's main appeal is combat. People play marines to kill aliens or assist in killing the aliens. There is very little to do outside of combat besides supplying the marines with equipment or patching them up if they get wounded. If you have a round where there is no combat, then pretty much 98% of the playerbase has nothing to do for hours at a time. There is a difference between complex events and railroading where nothing happens for hours. Its actually remarkable how long marines keep it together on extended rounds when they have nothing to do. The marines are building forts and defenses since they are bored and its better then doing nothing.

Basically, people play for combat. They might play to RP before and after combat, but the majority play for the combat. If there is no combat, and nothing else interesting to do outside of combat, then the marines will begin to act out since the only other thing to do is alt tab and wait for the round to end.

This on the other hand highlights the issue marines have, outside of their set roles on the ground, marines have little to do which means that unless you get to action fast, you'll be doing jack unless you decide to rambo (see four squad river assaults).

Shipside also has next to nothing fun to do now.
Engineering has been stripped to a mini game. They didn't even tie in the SM engine with the current SD system we have (removing the easy to grief parts), they just removed it. The fun things they could do like setting up bars is now frowned upon sadly, while yes it was grief it was mostly harmless. Now they are just glorified janitors that have to fix an engine or two and RP as nothing but hopeless drunk hackers.
Req, as much as I've pointed out that somewhat like the changes, has sadly caused marines to shift tactics so greatly that it's now being to affect xenos in a negative way. Worse now that they tend to have little in spare manpower to actually RP when times are a little more boring (I miss 4 Cts and a RO round).
Science is just an RP role with very little in terms of props to RP with.
No minor roles like Cooks or a chaplain which removes a small but possibly fun role on a ship.

When it comes to RP it's either something that's completely railroaded where marines either play nice and it goes on to be a nice round, or they completely fuck it up and cause admins to intervene from the start. I mean that round that was based around a false alarm? marines prepped up, went down, found nothing to do and then started to dick around. Because of this, three squads were told to head back. As an MT on that round all I did was keep the engines running and mop the odd floor wondering why there were so many marines on board. (note that most of the marines didn't even bother to return to the ship, instead they continued to goof around, those who did return either did some small RP, tabbed out, or went to cyro and found something else to do.)

[Tigroon]

No minor roles like Cooks or a chaplain which removes a small but possibly fun role on a ship.

Hell, I'd hold services and Cook meals for the crew if those roles were added. Wouldn't be the first time I would have to mass produce food for over 100 crew.

[Jonesome]

The game has lost a considerable amount of depth to satisfy the guns-blazing approach.