Update Discussion Thread (September 2018)

[Symbiosis]

This is pretty fun on the whole infected bursting on the Almayer angle. I think it really adds a unique aspect that's kinda spooky when a Marine bursts and a bunch bean boys pop out.

[Jeser]

Today I was told 5 larvas burst in Medbay and pretty much went pillage and raping on Almayer. Including killing all newly joined marines. Very fun.

[Simo94]

IMO this is the wrong way to buff xenos, even if they reach ancient/evolve faster, even if theres higher numbers, the truth is, and was, some castes are just not fun to play, like runner, whole crusher line and praetorian.

also, capturing hosts is not fun, guarding them isnt fun either, xenos dont need flat stat or evolution tick buffs, they need quality of life/gameplay revamp updates, since we arent bound to a set lore anymore, might as well improve the game and solve copyright issues at the same time. I hope thats the plan already and this update is a place holder.

[HKO20006]

> For the first 30 minutes of the round, alien evolution and upgrade speed is doubled. After this, the bonus tapers off over another 30 minutes.
Really good for round start T3s as they no longer need to suffer as being Young during early engaging time.
Xeno will be more forgiving so may be able to attract players and more challenging for marines to fight against (or too strong for the current unsuspecting marines/commands).

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

Literally easiest way to fix the problem of survivors abusing C4 to destroy tunnels without removing things.

Ban them for powergaming.

Stop removing features when they can be fixed by just telling people to stop, and punishing those who don't.

[Grubstank]

While I appreciate the attention towards rebalancing away from the marine curbstomp, the xenos now feel completely uncompetitive and boring to me. It is now far easier to win, and it feels that very little personal skill is involved. Giving the xenos so many T3s at the start is just a touch overboard in my opinion.Time to marine main again.

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

Actually, to be totally honest there's been a growing trend in updates over the last month where mechanics and features have been removed to prevent player abuse, and frankly I find this an infuriating move considering that most of these abusers are a minority.

The new MP rules, the C4 changes for survs, those sorts of rulebreaking issues are performed by a minority, which begs the question, why not let the moderating staff just punish the minority and keep the feature?

It's not like mods are up to their necks in issues, if I'll be frank they seem to have less to do now than ever before due to all these changes. Alot of shit that'd normally be instantly detected and beaten with harmbwoinktons without an ahelp seems to remain for several rounds.

So now I need to ask, and I mean no ill will by saying this:

Does the dev team not trust moderators to prevent the abuse of features? Or is there an issue with the rule revisions? What's making it so necessary that parts of the game are being removed due to the inability to police abuse?

[Gnorse]

Agreed. We need to start banning people and telling them to stop instead of completely removing actual fun features.

Sneaky edit : Scaling monkey numbers with population would go a long way as well.

[Heckenshutze]

So what you’re saying is we should let the players deal with players themselves.

Aka never remove anything just apply the damn rules to the letter and ban people.

I said the same thing almost a year ago but people prefer to have a cripple son of a game

[TheMaskedMan2]

I'm of the opinion that while at the moment, this update has led Xenos to be very very strong. I think with some simple adjustments to values, say for example the evo boost is 50% instead of doubled, maybe the chances for multi-larvae gets switched about, and the re-addition of the Tank would actually go pretty well. There is also an argument for removing some of the roundstart monkeys to further encourage infecting.

What I will say is a lot of the sheer insults, salt, and screaming at devs while the update isn't even a week old needs to tone down. Chill out, devs aren't robots and can't pump out 300 updates in 10 minutes. I have full faith in the team to fix any bad changes, adjust and balance, and I truly think we need to see how this works with the tank put back in.

[Pedr007]

Update of Evo speed coupled with the failure to scale Xeno to Marine ratio depening on the population means that during high pop, 125 and more players or more, the Xeno count is 25 Xenos or higher within 30 mins. This in return leads to massive amounts of Elder and even Ancient xenos, like 5 Ancient drones last round.

Imho CM has failed to present viable balancing measures during population shifts, especially lowpop and highpop. Highpop has always been on the Xeno side, due to the fact that a SS13 screen size can ever only be this large, meaning the maximum DPS of a marine squad peaks at around 8 guys max firing at xenos on 1 screen, on avg. All the Xenos need to do is just stack enough Health Points on 1 screen, with high HP beanos like Queen and Crusher, add all 3 Pheromones as insult to injury and simply out HP the marines to a degree where killing them becomes a statistical impossibility.

To address these issues you need to cut down maps in size and make them load, by default or admin loaded, during low pop rounds. Prison_Small, Ice_Small,LV_Small etc. This should fix the shitty hide n seek gameplay of lowpop rounds by forcing people into the same , smaller area.

To address the High pop issue the amount of Xenos need to be kept at a maximum of 25 at all times. This is simply due to the fact that during high pop the Civlian Roles like MP, Doctors and MT are filed up, yet do not actively participate in Combat and therefor do not deal dmg to xenos or kil Xenos. This also addresses the "Bulletsponge" Issue of large Xeno groups on your screen that you simply can not out dps due to pheros and Heatlh pool. Starting from 20 Xenos there needs to be a much flatter curve in hive size increase.

The Evolution boost needs to be removed. The multi larva spawn inside hosted marines needs to be removed. I would suggest instead that every successful infection that spawns a larva grants the Queen points into a Evo pool, which allows her to evolve 1 xeno from her hive list. This would mean: 1 Bursted marine means 1 free Upgrade/Evolution for a xeno that is selected by the Queen. I think this is a fair balance between effort and reward for the Xeno players.

This would appeal to Xeno players and at the same time make the gameplay more focused around capturing rather than afking with 30 guys in a cave, then rushing with Elder xenos and tripple pheromones to just sponge up all damage they receive.

Rewarding players for passive gameplay and even AFKing, like in the case of Xeno evolution timers, has been a bad mechanic from the get go. Try to stay away from it and code measures to make xenos less dependent on it, not more.

[Garrison]

While I feel the evolution boost is a step in the right direction.. the fact that this also applies to Ancients in addition to the Human capture buff seems rather excessive.

If were going to keep the evolution boost. There needs too be more ticks to get from Elder, to Ancient. Cause Ancients are too stronk.

EDIT: Joined a game to find out they nerfed the evo boost as well as how many Larvae the xenos have. Which I guess is a decent compromise in this case.

[BobatNight]

Thats a lot of words i only skimmed through.

"player votes on features" lol.

survivors on lv were using c4 to just delete useful pre generated tunnels, so now they lose access to c4, simple as that.

It's this exact kind of attitude that makes your development decisions poor, you've removed countless things from CM that could easily be handled by staff. Instead "well 1 guy abused it so nobody gets it now"

And I know, what a ridiculous suggestion, development based on what the community enjoys/wants

[misto]

Literally easiest way to fix the problem of survivors abusing C4 to destroy tunnels without removing things.

Ban them for powergaming.

Stop removing features when they can be fixed by just telling people to stop, and punishing those who don't.

tools can get survivors through walls as well without any threat to xeno tunnels. or perhaps planetside c4 could be changed into something that can kill walls but not tunnels. solid mechanical changes are a perfectly viable way to enforce things, resulting in less need for surveillance and policing

[HKO20006]

RavingManiac updated:
Alien roundstart evolution and upgrade bonus halved.
Latejoin larvae halved.

Thanks for the swift balance update.

[Lolibandit]

RavingManiac updated:
Alien roundstart evolution and upgrade bonus halved.
Latejoin larvae halved.

Thanks for the swift balance update.

"We are in a good place with balance right now, any idea for other tweaks?" said the devs.
"NERF THE FUKKEN XENOS" said a higher up.
"But we just made them less shitty!" they cried.
"You heard me, NERF THEM!" they higher up yelled, his mouth foaming over the decreased marine winrate.

And thus xenos went back to being shit.

[Sulaboy]

RavingManiac updated:
Alien roundstart evolution and upgrade bonus halved.
Latejoin larvae halved.

Thanks for the swift balance update.

This is interesting. With the changes to multiple larva, and now late join larva being cut, there should be less Xenos at the start of the round. This smaller amount of Xenos have the evo/upgrade boost so they'll be stronger than any of the Xenos from captures. I think this should cut down on Xeno delaying for burrowed larva because of how bursting puts ghosts into the larva.

What I hope this changes is that Xenos now snowball if they've been getting a lot of captures, and that a dying give is forced on the offensive to replenish their numbers.

I can't speak for game balance at the moment, but I'm looking forward to seeing how this ends up.

[GoliathTheDespoiler]

This is interesting. With the changes to multiple larva, and now late join larva being cut, there should be less Xenos at the start of the round. This smaller amount of Xenos have the evo/upgrade boost so they'll be stronger than any of the Xenos from captures. I think this should cut down on Xeno delaying for burrowed larva because of how bursting puts ghosts into the larva.

What I hope this changes is that Xenos now snowball if they've been getting a lot of captures, and that a dying give is forced on the offensive to replenish their numbers.

I can't speak for game balance at the moment, but I'm looking forward to seeing how this ends up.

I agree. I think I can finally be loved as a carrier main now!

[ThePiachu]

Playing a few rounds, I really dig the multiple larva spawn. It allows xenos to have a nice comeback if they manage to snag a few hosts. Sure, it sways the balance in favour of the xenos, but that could be counter-balanced with something else.

The SD timer thing is a bit eh with the above timer - you can now have a much longer engagement on the Almayer with all the extra xenos you can burst if you decide to capture people. It can really be a second stage to a battle!

[Novus Luna]

"We are in a good place with balance right now, any idea for other tweaks?" said the devs.
"NERF THE FUKKEN XENOS" said a higher up.
"But we just made them less shitty!" they cried.
"You heard me, NERF THEM!" they higher up yelled, his mouth foaming over the decreased marine winrate.

And thus xenos went back to being shit.

The xenos had 7 or 8 rounds in a row where they had won before 13:30, basically each time stealing the Alamo by 13:00. I think even the Xeno players wanted a fix because it just was not fun anymore.

[WinterClould]

I thought about it for a moment and like, I kind think marines should be getting their asses kicked more no matter how "unfun" people say it is.

Marines have a FIRM, UNBREAKABLE, COMMITED, any other adjative for dedicated, playerbase. There are people who will never stop playing marine and there are enough of them. I kinda want marines to be on the short end of the stick because they have this bedrock xenos just don't.

50/50 win rate doesn't leave marines with the right kind of "underdogs but still ultimate badasses" attitude they need to thrive. They stagnate and turn rotten when they have the upperhand. Even if it's 40/60 (however it works out with days of the week and times of the day factored in) marines could still win enough that they get satisfaction of a win here and there while still having to put so much more effort into winning it.

I might also want the marines to get wrecked because it breeds and has bred some of our greatest powergamer try hard badasses. Those mad lads are my heros. And that shits also funny to me.

The last thing I want is marines going soft and I feel like as a lot of vets have stopped playing there's prolly less of those heroic idols we had back in the day .

We need a new generation of men hardened by unforgiving and unfeeling devs. Devs who hear and see marine opinions then piss on them. We need that once more.

The hard times will bring about hard men. If the devs give marines an easy time they will only get easy marines.


Basically what I'm saying is bring back hugger combat.




Not a shitpost btw.




Okay the hugger combat part is and this next parts gonna be as well, but it's more a warning all together.
We need to keep the xenos stronger then the marines as we make the game more fun for both sides to play.

Perfect gameplay aint free. However the devs find the tree of Fun and balance it's gotta be litterd with the blood of Marines. Any dev that thinks marines should have an easy life are not my devs and probably code leaking spys from other servers. Xenos and Buffs, not Xenos and Nerfs. Praise Apophis

[spookydonut]

2 hours is about the perfect round length, rounds ideally should always be at least 90 minutes long, and at most 3 hours long.

That's our goal in terms of round length.

As I've said elsewhere I don't care about win rates as long as the players in general are having fun, I think that focusing on win rates is unhealthy for the community.

[WinterClould]

Yo that's actually hella right Spooks.
Who wins doesn't matter really, but xenos making it to the ship is key to a good round in my eyes, so that leads to favoring them on the ground I'd say.
More fun for me and prolly anyone who plays anything shipside if there's a fight on the ship that last long enough for the panic and desperate reality of the situation to really dawn on people.

I just saw the last part of Fury yesterday and that whole fight just, wowzers it blew my mind. No spoilers but it just completely had a perfect chain of events with just right drama and a perfect ending. The kinda shit CM needs. A damn fine last stand.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

• "USCM MRE crate (x20)" now contains 20 MREs, instead of 5.

• Increased random scatter of items thrown by explosions to reduce viability of certain tactics. You know what you did.

• Added more escape pods to the Almayer.

• Xenos crashing the shuttle into the Almayer now activates a containment failsafe causing ARES to decelerate the Almayer into the planet which becomes irreversable after 20 minutes.

• Evacuation is able to be started without a distress beacon, but consider it a loss if a xeno stows away inside one.

• The distress beacon is able to be activated immediately after crash, regardless of xeno numbers, expect more ert features in the near future.

New xeno endgame seems to be good, it forces marines to either fight to the death or evacuate.

[Herac]

I think that focusing on win rates is unhealthy for the community.

This is probably absolutly true but it will also likely never change, the mentality is ingrained in the community (from what I can see anyway, could be wrong) even for people who can lose and still have fun.

Also on topic: I like the new map changes for the most part, although I was a fan of the vehicle deck and it's elevator. More escape pods is great, getting rid of the tiny elevator between the brig and CIC, and bringing the OB down to the same level as the rest of the power loaders is good IMO.