Update Discussion Thread (August 2018)

[Sulaboy]

I'm coming in because after playing a couple rounds I wanna point out some things I don't like. Unholster delay is frustrating especially when it throws off the timing of actions, or causes you to fire one handed. Shotgun world delay has probably made shotguns less viable as a primary weapon which is probably the point, but I feel that a better way of doing this would be by making HvH rounds more common. You would hav e the round start off without any notice that it is different than a XvH round, and this would punish marines who decided to deploy with only shotguns being that they are less functional in HvH.

I'm still for the ammo changes. Req having ammo boxes is nice, and gives better representation of how many mags are in a pile. Not being able to fit mags in satchels/backpacks may have been silly, but I liked the change. I liked it mainly because I like having all my mags put away nicely, but not everyone likes that so it probably saved a lot of frustration reverting that change.

Also best way to have tackled super quick wield with shotguns attached with angled grips would have been to remove angled grips from the shotgun's attachment possibilities.

[Retrokinesis]

What I find really unfortunate about this is that mag harnesses are not just totally useless but actively harmful now. That was my favorite attachment and I preferred it over using a pick-up macro, but if the design goal here is "walk around with your weapon out and spam a pick-up macro when tackled or die because of wield delay" then I really don't have much of a choice in the matter.

The worst part is I don't even like shotguns. I hate the basically-melee playstyle and their feel and the randomness of buckshot. But there's no other option because every other weapon the marines have access to is bad. That is why people use shotguns almost exclusively now: not because they're overpowered, but because every other marine weapon is underpowered. The pulse rifle requires AP ammo to be usable at all, at a time when req's points are already stretched thin. The SMG is a bad joke pretending to be a weapon. The only remotely useful pistols - the .45 and the 88 mod 4 - are only available to certain roles or in extremely restricted numbers and getting more ammo for them is functionally impossible. I haven't tried the smartgun since the update but its delay was already rough and its rounds underpowered, so I can only imagine how meh it is now. Even among the specialist weapons, only the scout's battle rifle is truly amazing. I like playing sniper the best but scout is pretty much objectively more useful, and the other spec weapons are too situational for use as a primary.

Maybe the aforementioned xeno rework will magically make them into something other than colossal bullet sponges with instant-death tackles. Probably not, but I trust the devs to figure it out. But nerfing the only viable weapon the marines have at the moment without any kind of buffs to other weapons or temporary nerfs to xenos just feels misguided. Even ignoring the balance implications of delay, as a player it feels awful. It's the most immediately noticeable change you could have made and one that every marine player will feel the moment they pick up a gun, which is probably why there's so much heat around it compared to something less obvious like adjusting buckshot. You can't ignore it by changing up your equipment or playing a different role. It's everywhere you look.

[Casany]

People want to have fun playing CM but when these massive changes are made that EVERY marine player feels and can’t change unless they play shipside (and even then during briefing) makes it unfun.

The gist of what everyone’s saying from what I understand

[Rohesie]

So, point-blank has been nerfed and it doesn't bypass armor anymore. Since the change is not listed in the changelog I don't really know if it's intended or a bug. Or if it's a thing at all, but I have noticed crushers eating buckshot PBs like it was nothing. After accidentally FFing the CMP with PB buckshot I saw him surviving it with only a broken chest, he didn't fall into paincrit or anything. It was a funny situation and we exchanged screenshots after the fact. In his, I noticed his logs saying his armor absorbed part of the damage.

I won't go into why I see an issue in suddenly removing the only two counters to crushers and empresses marines have in one go (the other was the fixing of the tank treads, which is a change I've been expecting for a long time and most warmly support with all my heart). Instead I'd like to request the devs to let us players know about these changes.

I'm not sure if you deem them small enough not to be important, or if you just forget about it, or are lazy to add it to the changelog. Regardless of the issue, these changes are important. When you nerfed Prae shotgun I saw a player commenting a bit frustrated that they died because they were surprised by the undocumented change. I almost died as a runner because I fell into the req hole which led to disposals, and that was without announcement made to injure xenos as well. Bicard OD stopped working at some point, I commented about it in this thread, and then it was fixed. I never got any answers to it, but by the looks of it it's back. So it was a fixed bug rather than a stealth feature removal (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong).

My point after all this? Please document changes. Even if you deem them small. Bugfixes, feature changes. If you don't feel like doing it because it consumes too much time, give a trusted player read-only access to the code, such as the wiki maintainers who have spent so much time and effort in contributing to the game. Let them check the changes in gitlab and translate them to an acceptable standard in the changelog. We would be incredibly grateful not to be surprised by balance changes that are not an object of desire such as the tank was. Not every feature is better kept a secret, even if some are.

[carlarc]

time to main crusher, where's my evolve macro

[spookydonut]

No changes have been made to how point blank works with respect to armor. There is a bug with it that we intend to fix but we will changelog that when it happens.

We do have some xenomorph nerfs coming to Defender and Warrior specifically, along with general bullet sponginess of xenos in general.

I want to see another day or so of the revised wield delay before I look at any more changes to it.

[WinterClould]

What about my hair spooky. You know that's what really matters man. I need my bedhead 3 back. That and My souto but that can wait. My hair is a more pressing and long over due issue.

[immaspaceninja]

Industrial blowtorch is no longer in the autolathe for some reason. Hacking it now only unlocks handcuffs.

[Dauntasa]

Can we get a breakdown on the xeno stat changes? Changelog is a pretty vague about the whole thing.

[doodeeda]

I want the old mohawk back. I'm probably the only character who uses it but it looks terrible now.

[WinterClould]

Watch as spooky ignores our plea's for the return of reasonable hairdoo's that we're STOLEN from us. He'll either ignore our cries or dismiss us as shitposters or something.

Na I'm serious here. I think bedhead 3 was unjustly removed and was a reasonable hair style. Bring back our hair 2K18 baby.

[Herac]

Can we get a breakdown on the xeno stat changes? Changelog is a pretty vague about the whole thing.

It's probably intentionally vague.

[WolfyPT]

I love all these new changes that have been implemented the past days, the only thing i dont like is the wield delay that was made even more frustrating to deal with as a marine.
Some of the best things in my opinion are the nerf to the tank stun and in general removing the xeno dragging away dead people and and stopping the warriors from constantly trying to tear off limbs of infected people for no reason. Have not tried out the rebalanced xenos yet though. I would really like more detailed changelog notes though, for how the xeno's were rebalanced and how significant the marine weapon buffs were.

[Kavlo]

Watch as spooky ignores our plea's for the return of reasonable hairdoo's that we're STOLEN from us. He'll either ignore our cries or dismiss us as shitposters or something.

Na I'm serious here. I think bedhead 3 was unjustly removed and was a reasonable hair style. Bring back our hair 2K18 baby.

Yea I agree, bring back bedhead 2 as well.

[Casany]

Yea I agree, bring back bedhead 2 as well.

Yeah and where is my floor length braid

[Sambalu]

I like the fact that xenos can't drag defibbable corpses anymore.

[CABAL]

It took a whole month from "A Real Discussion: Xeno Meta Gaming" thread creation but it is here. Slight proof that someone realised something. I can withdraw some of my nasty words about staff, but only some.

[Retrokinesis]

It's a good and very welcome change. I agree that a mechanical solution was the right call, as leaving it up to rules would be a lot of extra work for the mods and it would still happen if no one ahelped it.

I am still not comfortable with this new reality of the M39 apparently being at least somewhat good now. I'm not sure the rules - of both the server and reality itself - allow that to be the case, and caution the devs that whatever dark powers they invoked to allow it will surely exact a price later.

[Gnorse]

I am genuinely happy with the game now.
Sppoky and the dev team in general have been responding to forum threads/gitlab posts way more now, which is some quality shit.

[Casany]

I am genuinely happy with the game now.
Sppoky and the dev team in general have been responding to forum threads/gitlab posts way more now, which is some quality shit.

[mat13295]

Tackle nerf feels like it's non-existant tbh.

[RobBrown4PM]

Having played Xeno all day I can say that tackling is much more difficult now

[Jeser]

Devs overdid Crusher nerf. One thing is nearly unkillable xeno because of incredible armor and stupid not working anti bodyblock system and another being penetrated by REGULAR M41A bullets to the CREST, which rendered Crusher useless. You can't even cover boiler now, because marine with M41A with scope can kill ya offscreen as crusher.

[CABAL]

Devs overdid Crusher nerf. One thing is nearly unkillable xeno because of incredible armor and stupid not working anti bodyblock system and another being penetrated by REGULAR M41A bullets to the CREST, which rendered Crusher useless. You can't even cover boiler now, because marine with M41A with scope can kill ya offscreen as crusher.

Crushers can block the tank now. Marines needs something to scare them off and since that stupid "moonwalk" not being able to damage it from the front is unbalanced.
Charger is not defender, defender is "defender". It's defender job to defend boilers.

How many marines carry scopes? How many boilers stay in the light? Crushers won't be able to handle 1 vs What's left on the almayer becouse of charge "missuse" (escaping like queen before nerf). Nerf is pretty good and I guess it is rare for Pulse Rifle to penetrate crest on the same screen, not even talking about offscreen.

[carlarc]

It's a good and very welcome change. I agree that a mechanical solution was the right call, as leaving it up to rules would be a lot of extra work for the mods and it would still happen if no one ahelped it.

I am still not comfortable with this new reality of the M39 apparently being at least somewhat good now. I'm not sure the rules - of both the server and reality itself - allow that to be the case, and caution the devs that whatever dark powers they invoked to allow it will surely exact a price later.

smg is really good, get with the times old man