Why Xenos are losing so badly - and how to fix it.

[Symbiosis]

I assure you the win rate has been tanking again lately, even with AP and Requisition nerfs. If they remove AP, Marines will go shotguns, they remove shotguns, Marines will go dual SMG’s and run us down like hounds on a fox.

A lot of Xeno Mains are feeling the frustrations with the round start Larva nerfs, the poor change to burrowing Larva removing the chance to join as a Xeno if you’re mashing that Join-As-Xeno macro I’m sure most of you have, and the general feeling of powerlessness as Marines continue to roll us every game. The games we win are tied to early aggression on our side (with Queen screeches), extreme incompetence on the Marine side, or a few Xenos dragging the round out for hours and constantly running away.

Not the CM experience that keeps Xeno players engrossed. So what’s the answer? Any attempt to revert bad changes is immediately shut down and if they nerf the Marines too hard or buff us too much it’s a shitshow as the more robust Xenos will just be able to delay indefinitely.

I’d love to have all the answers, but seeing as I’d rather not post an idea that’s immediately blacklisted by Devs, I’ll let you Xeno Mains post some ideas. Converse amongst yourselves.

#MakeXenoGreatAgain

[Karmac]

I feel at this point it's impossible to balance the game properly anymore while taking into consideration the constant buffs/nerfs to various mechanics, while individual player skill still has a big effect on which side wins, with xenos getting a bigger benefit from having skilled players while marines will ultimately have just as much a chance to die as the next baldie, permanently throwing darts blindly at a development board looks like the only option to me.

[Tigroon]

Not a Xeno Main, but every so often, grab the Queen slot. Balance your Xenos at the start. Make sure there's one of each caste, best case, two. Plant one Drone on weeding duty outside the hive, one drone working on basic defenses. Carrier up as first T3. Traps. Everywhere. Allow afterwards free evolve so others may choose the roles best suited to them. VERY. IMPORTANT. Let your bloody Xenos work with the groupings they are BEST with. But do not be afraid to lay down some law if you have 3-4 Runners already, and really god damn need some Drones or Sents.

Keep your T3s home until Mature. Important. Make it a clear order. Word of the Queen it if you have to. Inform Admins if they disobey, as T3 slots, if wasted, hit Xenos the hardest.

KEEP. THINGS. BALANCED. If you have two T3s in the Defensive Caste, you'd better god damn have two T3s in the Offensive Caste. Strong Defense with weak Offensive leads to getting steamrolled by a heavy Marine rush. Strong Offensive without a Strong Defensive leaves your units without support, and easy to pick off.

STAY. OVI'D. Don't move unless the marines are KNOCKING on your egg chamber.

Be sure to be paying attention to the lesser T1s. If someone is having trouble, GUIDE them, or prod a Mod or Mentor to give them a hand. T2s, if they do not know what they are doing, or are unbalancing things terribly, SHOULD be devolved.

WORK WITH YOUR HIVE. There are more experienced players out there, and they CAN help. Listen to advice. You are a H I V E M I N D . Not a M A T R I A R C H Y.

[Potato Masher]

The main issue I am finding during my recent Queen rounds is that the xenos either:

A: Don't have the numbers to keep a sustained fight against high-pop Marines; it's hard to fight 100~ Marines with only 20~ Xenos of varying skill ability.

B: Have Bald Xenos constantly taking T3's and then proceeding to kill themselves while young, despite the Queen's constant reminders that Young xenos should stay back until Mature. This results in the Hive being screwed for the rest of the round, as they try to fight with less numbers and minimal T3 support.

For A, the simple solution would be to just give them a few extra roundstart larva. As for B, I can't really think of a easy way to deal with this. If the Queen notices disobedience then sure she can ahelp them, but you can't really fix incompetence.

Xeno wins are do-able, but require WAY more cooperation and careful planing than before. Maybe that's the way the devs wanted it to play out, I'm not sure.


(Also crushers do next to nothing when compared to other options)

[RobBrown4PM]

Crushers need help. As of right now they are next to useless. Crushers are/were important part of any offence/defence, however, they seemingly can't seem to take any damage at the moment, at least not like they were able to.

Secondly, something needs to be done about the sheer amount of AP on the battlefield. When playing Xeno, I find that AP is still extremely bountiful on the battlefield come mid round. It either needs to have its damage nerfed, or, it's availability needs to be looked at. The req changes didn't do to much to prevent AP spamming.

[MattAtlas]

Crushers are pretty much useless right now, with a Boiler + Ravager combo doing literally what a crusher does but better, and the Queen having a better charge due to screech.

But the main problem stems from the fact that since the roundstart Larva nerf update (why did it even happen), xenos barely even have the population to fight. Not only is Xeno roundstart population absolute shit in low to highpop transition times, it usually ends up as 15 xenos versus what, 130 marines? And this makes xenos rely EVEN MORE on a couple of skilled xenos. And after that nerf, larvas were nerfed EVEN MORE because of the recent update.

The other cause imo is how strong AP is compared to normal bullets. 2 AP bursts will end pretty much every young T3 except a crusher (maybe), and since there are very little roundstart xenos, the loss of a T3 or hell, even a T2, will hurt the Hive a LOT more.

[Gnorse]

Yeah. The problem isn't with Requisitions or AP or whatever, It's just that xenos depend on the queen way too much.
My suggestion is that you nerf the queen a bit (take away neuro or something ?) and then spread some love around other castes, especially crusher.
Right now, It's not fun to be a crusher, and it's also not fun to fight a swiss-knife queen as a marine.

[Simo94]

There are many solutions to it, and they are all on Gitlab but they require work to do, the ones im mostly interested in are the xeno perk system and the redistribution of xeno power, such as nerfing ancient/elite and buffing young/mature etc, same for Queen/T3s against T1s/T2s.

[KingPhilipIII]

The issue of population is undeniable because marines have often begun extremely aggressive tactics to avoid getting heavily bogged down where they will lose their war of attrition. Hence those famous four squad rushes across the river. It's hilarious how we've reversed the movie because it's absolutely terrifying as a xenomorph to just see a horde of ungas charging towards you and you've got like four people with you making up a quarter of your hive against a charging group of forty marines driven by command to be as aggressive as possible.

I saw a change to semi-nerf AP by giving xenos more health in exchange for removal of some of their armor which would have worked nicely if it ever went through.

Finally. You're still one person. You can shout and rage for everyone to gather on the Queen(Or if you are the Queen order everyone to get to you) but you can't change the fact half the hive won't come and you often don't have the time to try to get your entire horde under control. I speak from personal experience that I've had moments where the Queen orders a rally while I'm in the middle of ambushing marines and I think "What I'm doing is more important. I'm fine. I should ask to stay." and a lot of times people won't ask to stay and the Queen is just left to dry and too busy to systematically report these people.

[solidfury7]

Mixture of higher marine competency and communication.

Marines adjusting to new meta.

Marines being forced to be more aggressive due to cargo changes. (I can confirm this as I've main CO and SL, and occasionally RO)

Xenos being filled with more baldies.

[Shuffl3]

Well, the easiest solution is to just redefine success.

We can simply out-roleplay the marines if we decide that winning is not wiping out the marines and seizing control of the Almayer. If we agree that a xeno major is something more reasonable like merely ensuring the survival of the hive then lots of new strategies open up. A drone/larva survived to round end? Xeno Minor. Drone/larva is hiding aboard the Almayer at round end? Xeno Major. Who cares if the Devs log it as a Xeno Loss? Just more justification to nerf marines or buff the hive. A perfect organism never loses unless it believes it loses.

Its really just Embracing the Suck. Because this game is statically balanced and asymmetrical its always going to be radically shifting favor like this. As the list of acceptable meta grows larger and players ditch RP to become more efficient RTS style gameplay is just going to become more pronounced. Without some kind in-game dynamic balancing system to foil it our best option is to just take it on the nose and Lose. Devs perform the same function, they just need longer amounts of time to process the feedback and winrates are the right metric to use for that.

[Toroic]

Xeno is undeniably less convenient to play with lower roundstart pop, and so much of the entire team's power now hinges on the queen alone.

Crushers used to be able to initiate fights, and now the queen is both the logistics backbone of the hive and the most powerful combat unit with the only initiating kit. She's necessary for fighting off an early marine attack, but the hive is heavily crippled if she dies so she either carries the game or dooms the xeno team.

Also, the xeno community can't ever know when they can trust each other or the queen so they don't benefit from the morale boost or ability to trust other players that marine regulars do.

Basically, if you're a xeno player it's never been so inconvenient to play on xeno side (higher than ever risk of 20+ minute wait to even play) and unless you have a good queen the game is already lost because so much of your team's power relies on her.

It's always irritated me that marines can play CM when they want to (unrestricted latejoin) and xenos have heavily limited latejoin as well as heavily limited roundstart joining. This, along with how hard it is to be recognized for robust play, contributes immensely to why so few people play xeno.

Well, the easiest solution is to just redefine success.

We can simply out-roleplay the marines if we decide that winning is not wiping out the marines and seizing control of the Almayer. If we agree that a xeno major is something more reasonable like merely ensuring the survival of the hive then lots of new strategies open up. A drone/larva survived to round end? Xeno Minor. Drone/larva is hiding aboard the Almayer at round end? Xeno Major. Who cares if the Devs log it as a Xeno Loss? Just more justification to nerf marines or buff the hive. A perfect organism never loses unless it believes it loses.

Its really just Embracing the Suck. Because this game is statically balanced and asymmetrical its always going to be radically shifting favor like this. As the list of acceptable meta grows larger and players ditch RP to become more efficient RTS style gameplay is just going to become more pronounced. Without some kind in-game dynamic balancing system to foil it our best option is to just take it on the nose and Lose. Devs perform the same function, they just need longer amounts of time to process the feedback and winrates are the right metric to use for that.

Lol at this entire post. Part of me wants to go on a rant tearing each ridiculous and ass-backwards point apart while insulting you the whole time, but that would be about as fair as punting an infant.

Instead I'll politely disagree and state that I feel there's not one syllable of helpful information in your post, and leave it at that.

[Aredal]

I would enjoy a total reverse of what we have currently, making marines have 60 maximum people at a time scaling up to the 60 with the number of xenos. But having them be much more powerful, while there would be 100 xenos who would be much weaker, with a way for them to latejoin freely. Also making the game much more deadly for both sides, perma deaths being the common way to die, and being able to be revived and survive the complications be rare. Making xenos have a health system similiar to marines, losing limbs and such, but being able to regenerate them with some penalities, through long rests, also lowering the xeno hard crit range, but also giving them a soft crit health that slowly goes down, but they can act during it. In the hard crit xenos would enter some sort of stasis, unable to use their Hivemind, but still being able to be located through it. It would take them much longer to heal from it then normally, but they would not die of oxyloss in the hardcrit, unless finished off. Make it so dropships take much longer to launch/refuel and so on. Make it so that the xenos objective is to drive marines off the planet. If all marines leave after the initial drop, the story ends. If some xenos manage to get onto the dropship while it is launching, the round would be delayed and continue on. Critical ship systems would be added, hurting them would effect the ship itself, with posibilities of removing all air from it and such. The story would end if all xenos onboard died, all marines onboard died, all critical systems got destroyed, or the ship has self destructed.

[Toroic]

I would enjoy a total reverse of what we have currently, making marines have 60 maximum people at a time scaling up to the 60 with the number of xenos. But having them be much more powerful, while there would be 100 xenos who would be much weaker, with a way for them to latejoin freely. Also making the game much more deadly for both sides, perma deaths being the common way to die, and being able to be revived and survive the complications be rare. Making xenos have a health system similiar to marines, losing limbs and such, but being able to regenerate them with some penalities, through long rests, also lowering the xeno hard crit range, but also giving them a soft crit health that slowly goes down, but they can act during it. In the hard crit xenos would enter some sort of stasis, unable to use their Hivemind, but still being able to be located through it. It would take them much longer to heal from it then normally, but they would not die of oxyloss in the hardcrit, unless finished off. Make it so dropships take much longer to launch/refuel and so on. Make it so that the xenos objective is to drive marines off the planet. If all marines leave after the initial drop, the story ends. If some xenos manage to get onto the dropship while it is launching, the round would be delayed and continue on. Critical ship systems would be added, hurting them would effect the ship itself, with posibilities of removing all air from it and such. The story would end if all xenos onboard died, all marines onboard died, all critical systems got destroyed, or the ship has self destructed.

While I like that idea it would remove a lot of the asymmetry from the combat as it stands now. Personally I'd really like to see the roundstart xeno population being higher with excess monkeys removed as necessary. It's a lot more annoying playing xeno now than it used to be largely because of the low starting population.

Your concept also wouldn't change that most people don't want to play xeno, period. It's very common in any mid-pop or higher game to have more larva than people to fill them, and in some games that has severely crippled the hive as people just don't join as xeno.

[Shuffl3]

Dont be puss, kick the baby.

Changing the way we approach the game is the only real thing we can control. I love making angry noises in the direction of the people in charge of things as much as the next guy but unless we all start like, logging our rounds and distributing the .htm files so we can develop a clear picture of whats going on this is all just anecdotal whinging.

Anyways, to me this seems like a stability problem. A dynamic control system would be a more robust solution than any individual tweak. There already is one, in the form of the devs, but its just not responsive enough. I could see a subtle system placed in the game mechanics that could help to smooth out the wild swings like this. A Situational RNGesus if you would.

[Tisx]

The fall of the hive has been a long time coming in my mind, I believe that these points have caused the fall

1.Queens and T3s falling to the spec virus.

What is the spec virus? The spec virus is when a role becomes oversaturated with players due to the role having the COMBAT ability to change the game.

The Queen currently is so powerful that a huge amount of players want to play her due to her vast and powerful abilities, a good number of players have no idea how to properly command the hive, hell I think a good number of them have never been a command role before. The even bigger problem is that these players also aren't very robust in combat either, and due to that, xenos have to deal with a nasty double whammy; They'll get a queen how has no regard for hive control, nor a queen that will be able to turn the tide against marines that have more then a brain cell.(And as I have seen over the last few weeks, the latest batch of marines have a lot more then one brain cell).

To fix this you would either need a round start queen whitelist, Or you would have the nerf the queen so hard that she would no longer fall under the spec virus.

2.Xeno buffs and marine nerfs lead to much more aggressive marines.

Marines react to balance changes quickly as everyone in this thread most likely knows, the problem is that right now marines have adapted to the latest nerfs and buffs by turning their attack tactics into...well...ATTACK. ASAP. Marines are looking for pretty much ANY excuse early game to charge full speed into a hive that has maybe at most a handful of elites, and most of time, in combination of a spec queen, the hive gets murdered in the span of 5 minutes, and the game is over for most xenos as they had no chance to defend against a 3 and even at times 4 squad rush into the hive, and if those SLs know how use support? Well then it's just over.

Also, when marines realize that their early rush isn't going to work and they start getting push backed, they fall back, All the way back, like, back to the ship, and they turtle there, in which then a xeno major turns into a RNG roll, Land in the hanger? Kiss your easy Xeno major goodbye. Land in the brig and a death ball of 60+ marines is on it's way? Rip you.

3.Return of the old guard of marines

Maybe it's just me, but lately I've been seeing a lot of old faces return and playing marine. These old players seem to be able to take control of unholy masses of squads and give them the basic forms of squad formation, which means less easy picking for hunters, which means less larva overtime, and more marines overtime, not only that, but these people also seem to understand that they have support, and know the meaning of flanking.

-----------

So, Xenos have a lot of problems that have been building since...well a long ass time, Can they be fixed? Perhaps, however the big problem is a lot of people don't want to play xeno ATM and a good part of people(I would say about 60%)playing xeno are the spec/baldies/crewies that are causing these win rates, Xenos could be nerfed to get rid of spec virus, but then, who would play xeno?

As you can see, I think that the Devs hands are tied when it comes to this. Buff xenos? More spec queens and T3s. Nerf Xenos? Not enough xenos players to outweigh the amount of marines. Nerf Marines? Marines will just rush earlier, Buff Marines? Could lead to xenos mains just switching over.

TL:DR, Queen role is over-saturated with un-robust players, Marines are more robust and aggressive then ever, no real way out ATM.

[SovietKitty]

I think the problem is a mixed bag. A lot of the xeno players I've been noticing are new, and Queen's have been taking a less active role in their hive only acting as a basic AI who can heal people every so often. The major lack of front line Queens after a certain stage really puts a hamper on the xenos ability to pressure, push, and secure hit and runs easily.

[ThePiachu]

Queen round start whitelist is a good idea. At least if it's implemented as "if there is anyone on the whitelist, use them, otherwise assign another player".

Adjusting the amount of larva start is a simple tweak that might help. It's also worth keeping in mind that there is also a psychological aspect to this - the more players start the round, the more players you have that will be interested in the round. Waiting 20 minutes for the first wave of smallhosts to burst can drive some people away from participating in the round at all.

There should also be some automatic scaling based on the number of xeno players vs marine players. Say, if the game has low Xeno player population, every xeno matures faster or something. This could be for example managed by the number of inactive larva, say "every larva waiting to spawn grants X% faster maturity to living xenos". This way even if you have few players playing xenos, the game would balance itself a bit against the more populat marines.

A much more complicated approach would to have "mutators" added to a round. Say, maybe xenos would have more health and less armour, or would be immune to fire, or be more stealthy, etc. Something to keep the marines on their toes at the start of each round - not knowing what to bring and how to approach things until they have their first xeno samples analysed. Of course, this can be rather complicated to develop.

It would be interesting to perhaps also see some different maps that might favour xenos a bit more. Maybe a circular map where marines land in the middle and don't know which way to bum rush into, or some longer, more narrow map where marines would extend themselves if they wanted to push.

You also need some more tight meta to develop for xenos. Perhaps having some guide on how to start a round strong one could give to baldies so they'd know what they are doing. With tighter strategy, you could turn the tides a bit more in your favour.

[Toroic]

I think the problem is a mixed bag. A lot of the xeno players I've been noticing are new, and Queen's have been taking a less active role in their hive only acting as a basic AI who can heal people every so often. The major lack of front line Queens after a certain stage really puts a hamper on the xenos ability to pressure, push, and secure hit and runs easily.

This wasn’t an issue prior to the crusher stomp and speed nerf as the queen wasn’t the only xeno who could fill that role.

Queen round start whitelist is a good idea. At least if it's implemented as "if there is anyone on the whitelist, use them, otherwise assign another player".

Adjusting the amount of larva start is a simple tweak that might help. It's also worth keeping in mind that there is also a psychological aspect to this - the more players start the round, the more players you have that will be interested in the round. Waiting 20 minutes for the first wave of smallhosts to burst can drive some people away from participating in the round at all.

There should also be some automatic scaling based on the number of xeno players vs marine players. Say, if the game has low Xeno player population, every xeno matures faster or something. This could be for example managed by the number of inactive larva, say "every larva waiting to spawn grants X% faster maturity to living xenos". This way even if you have few players playing xenos, the game would balance itself a bit against the more populat marines.

A much more complicated approach would to have "mutators" added to a round. Say, maybe xenos would have more health and less armour, or would be immune to fire, or be more stealthy, etc. Something to keep the marines on their toes at the start of each round - not knowing what to bring and how to approach things until they have their first xeno samples analysed. Of course, this can be rather complicated to develop.

It would be interesting to perhaps also see some different maps that might favour xenos a bit more. Maybe a circular map where marines land in the middle and don't know which way to bum rush into, or some longer, more narrow map where marines would extend themselves if they wanted to push.

You also need some more tight meta to develop for xenos. Perhaps having some guide on how to start a round strong one could give to baldies so they'd know what they are doing. With tighter strategy, you could turn the tides a bit more in your favour.

I personally have not played due to facing a 20+ min wait many times before, and while it would be great to develop more guides for xenos (I personally have written 3, two of which were rendered completely obsolete with crusher nerfs and xeno macros being removed) the lack of a xeno community makes it hard to retain regulars.

There’s also the problem that if playing xeno gets more popular, it becomes even more difficult to get in at roundstart or latejoin.

[AverageSpitter]

Yeah boy we are losing because i dont get roundstart larva as much as before so i can't carry the hive

[KingPhilipIII]

The oversaturation of bald Queens is most definitely a leading cause of Xeno Loss Syndrome. I don't care what other arguments are brought forward, you can't deny the massive impact a Queen that can neither command her minions nor stop a marine push. Even if she dies early so you can get someone new in control it's too late. The marines have too much momentum and the xenos are routed and ruined.

A common thing I'll repeat as a Queen is the need to break the marine's momentum, because the initial push with all of your men together, uninjured and charging is when the unga dungas are most dangerous. This will require some very careful play, excellent risk evaluation and incredibly poor choices on the marine's part, and if you don't have all three there's a good chance you won't stop them before your hive is crippled by losses.

[Jonesome]

Your concept also wouldn't change that most people don't want to play xeno, period. It's very common in any mid-pop or higher game to have more larva than people to fill them, and in some games that has severely crippled the hive as people just don't join as xeno.

But in that scenario players would be forced to join as xeno if there’s a limit of 60 marines, it’s either that or just observe the round. This could also be combatted by making the aliens more interesting to play and giving them cooler features beyond just cheap stun gimmicks.

[Reuben Owen]

preferred squad lets marines pair up with the same dudes every time
then they get to know each other better and robust ppl join with other robust ppl way more
and the longer it exists the better marines get with their squaddies each round
the more they play, they more they know if their mates are unreliable or not and so can be more aggressive together which makes for really strong flanks and pushes

while xenos still have a crapshot when trying to team/pair with other robust xenos, you can't tell whos who and so that rav you paired with is unreliable and dies in the first minute
etc
the only robust xeno that doesn't need to pair up to be effective is queen, which is why the xenos 'need' her to come out so often because they don't wanna pair with ppl like marines do bc chances are their fellow xenos are gonna die
something that happens alot is I "tag along" as a latejoin runner/drone with a t2/3 but they just end up dying quick and i sigh internally

there are times where you see duo hunters (or three or a hunter+runner) hunting outside of the hive which is so effective its ridiculous since marines tend to at least pair up now and 2/3 xenos will fuck up a pair, but that duo most likely didnt start out that way and just bumped into each other, it is not standard by far, because pairing like that with random ppl is unreliable

uhh what else
xenos still have trouble dealing out roles

[Toroic]

preferred squad lets marines pair up with the same dudes every time
then they get to know each other better and robust ppl join with other robust ppl way more
and the longer it exists the better marines get with their squaddies each round
the more they play, they more they know if their mates are unreliable or not and so can be more aggressive together which makes for really strong flanks and pushes

while xenos still have a crapshot when trying to team/pair with other robust xenos, you can't tell whos who and so that rav you paired with is unreliable and dies in the first minute
etc
the only robust xeno that doesn't need to pair up to be effective is queen, which is why the xenos 'need' her to come out so often because they don't wanna pair with ppl like marines do bc chances are their fellow xenos are gonna die
something that happens alot is I "tag along" as a latejoin runner/drone with a t2/3 but they just end up dying quick and i sigh internally

there are times where you see duo hunters (or three or a hunter+runner) hunting outside of the hive which is so effective its ridiculous since marines tend to at least pair up now and 2/3 xenos will fuck up a pair, but that duo most likely didnt start out that way and just bumped into each other, it is not standard by far, because pairing like that with random ppl is unreliable

uhh what else
xenos still have trouble dealing out roles

Especially with the new larva mechanics requiring queen to ovi before new xenos can join, and a tendency to have queen not ovi'd unless xeno team is already winning, you literally have about 2 oppurtunities to join team xeno.

1) At roundstart

2) First round of bursting local fauna

In theory you'd have more later in the game but considering how fast larva run out now, and how rare it is for a queen to stay in ovi for most of the game, you might be waiting most of an hour if there are even larvae left.

It's amazing how inconvenient it's become to play xeno compared to how it was before, and while I fully believe that the devs have the best of intentions with their changes, many of which are positive, it's also appears none of them are xeno mains who would have a deeper understanding of how the xeno team functions.

[immaspaceninja]

Imo, they should somehow balance xenos to avoid all that 'sit afk in the hive for 30 minutes till you're mature' stuff, so any player can just hop in and join the battle without dying of boredom.