Fixing the Xeno Power Curve

[Surrealistik]

Enough is enough.

The current Xeno power curve is and has been in serious, desperate need of extensive revision for a very long time, pretty much since the upgrade system was introduced years ago.

Early Xenos are laughably weak; conversely, later on they're fundamentally unstoppable short of the baldest aliens, and most unfailingly competent/coordinated marine team (barring something extraordinarily distortive to the meta). Essentially they J curve into the unseen stratosphere as upgrades and evolutions exponentialize their power, while starting at near nil.

What this creates is a standard, baseline meta where aliens are strongly and naturally incentivized to camp and turtle, and marines are meanwhile strongly encouraged to aggressively rush; obviously this has created and continues to create all kinds of glaring gameplay problems.

Further, yes, I'm aware that the deadly alien endgame was intended to bring the game to an eventual close but even if it succeeds at this (which is unclear per the following breakdown), what happens in practice, by way of said above perverse incentives, is a strong encouragement of defensive build up and turtling on the aliens part before they move into their aggressive phase, drawing out game times and in general causing more gameplay problems than it solves:

At present, early to mid, if the xenos are playing the game even remotely competently, marines end up dealing with unfun, painful slogs through sticky/thick resin/hugger trap attrition land (these things also proving problematic given the huge disparity between the time and resources invested to create them and those to remove them), and during the late, the xenos absolutely chunka dunka the marines to oblivion with egregiously overpowered Elite+ upgrades; in both cases, the game is a lot less fun than it otherwise could, and should be, while the overall effect of these ridiculously overpowered upgrades, given how they're achieved, may actually be to _increase_ the duration of average game times contrary to its goal of reducing them and eliminating stalls: namely, if both marines and xenos can afford to be aggressive early-mid, and their incentives are bent in that direction, instead of one side turtling up massively, it is likely that, having engaged each other in a head on brawl, one may end up decimated in such a way that the game snowballs decisively in the other's favour, while both sides are engaged in more dynamic, faster paced gameplay that is generally a lot more fun, which would generally mean shorter games.


How to fix this?

The most obvious approach would be to both flatten out the power curve for xenos, such that they start out significantly more powerful, but can no longer achieve the unstoppable godlike apexes offered by Elite+, and to weaken some of the more egregious turtling/attrition promoting tools like thick resin walls and sticky resin, either directly with nerfs, or indirectly with marine countermeasures.

Ideally, building on this, xenos would be given some method of _choosing_ how they improve between different options per each upgrade level (because interesting choices you have agency over tend to make for a more fun game), and these upgrade levels are commensurate to resources/metrics that actually matter other than time, like say infestation % and/or biomass assimilated by the queen (nums corpses), which might be indexed to/influenced by the number of marines.

[spookydonut]

We realise this and have a plan for a long term gameplay rework it's just taking a while to do

[solidfury7]

We realise this and have a plan for a long term gameplay rework it's just taking a while to do

This.

The developers are volunteers.

This isn't a triple AAA title with a full team working during crunch time. We just reworked the whole xeno caste system with a huge update. Now we are fine tuning the balance while still implementing new content which will also upset that balance.

So this takes time.

If you do quick fixes, you end up with shite like the fog on LV which nobody likes.

[Torrentia]

I think this is a great writeup that succintly describes the current condition of the game. While I'm very happy to hear developer acknowledgement of the issue I'd love it even more if a long-term plan/roadmap was shared with the playerbase so we can get some insight into what's in store for the future.

As for the "not-a-triple-A" comment, perhaps sharing info re: gameplay visions would take some pressure off the devs to constantly be justifying their changes. I don't feel like this was written as an attack on the speed of development or anything like that.

[spookydonut]

I'll check with BMC if we can

[davidofmk771]

I'd think a better solution would be a sharp increase in the early-game xeno numbers alongside some sort of severe temporary nerf, such as inability to upgrade or evolve into certain classes. I have seen the argument made multiple times that this idea wouldn't work because there are 'too few xeno players', but I feel that is utterly irrelevant even if true. What if there were simply no respawn restrictions for xenos before the inevitable late-round gameplay-shift back to standard power and population levels?

Right now I feel that there is far too much peeky-shooty stuff going on in the early game, with runners actively teasing marines into wasting ammo. Who is that fun for? What kind of sense does that make in any telling of the AvP universe?

I don't have any idea how this would really work, whether based on a timer or amount of kills on either side, but I do think it would fix the problem of early-round slumps and the general culture of marine rushing that is implicit to the boredom and random teasing-retreating runners/lurkers that make up the early-round meta.

[Troika]

I'd like it if along with this, games were sped up a bit somehow. 4 to 5 hour games are just exhausting.

[solidfury7]

I think this is a great writeup that succintly describes the current condition of the game. While I'm very happy to hear developer acknowledgement of the issue I'd love it even more if a long-term plan/roadmap was shared with the playerbase so we can get some insight into what's in store for the future.

As for the "not-a-triple-A" comment, perhaps sharing info re: gameplay visions would take some pressure off the devs to constantly be justifying their changes. I don't feel like this was written as an attack on the speed of development or anything like that.

The idea of a roadmap is something I've supported for a while but there is a solid reason (I forget what) why it was never implemented even after discussion. Its probably due to the fact that new content is often delayed for one reason or another (addressing more prominent issues such as bugs or unexpected metabreaking stuff)

Hell, it would be nice if we had a few things wrote down even if in bullet points on things the devs are looking in to or addressing such as..

1)Research Revamp

2) LV map rework

3) QoL changes for tank movement on "x" map

Ect ect.

Without having any fixed dates or estimates. Updated once a month or so.

it would probably cut down on a lot of duplicate threads too saying "Fuq da warrior".