Update Discussion Thread (August 2018)

[spookydonut]

This is for discussion on the recent updates.

Previous thread: viewtopic.php?f=64&t=16279

[Davidchan]

Wow, so you locked and hid the previous thread so players can't even see what was already discussed? Genius.

Shotgun + angled with either slug or buck is/was way too lethal in cqc with xenos like lurkers that rely on ambushing solo marines and we wanted to address the insta draw and shoot shotgun play to make ambushing solo marines more viable, we went a little to far with the delay and have scaled it back, it's only a small increase to the delay now.

Seriously? A vent crawling caste with a leap attack, low visibility and enough health and damage to permanently remove marine from the fight is the excuse you've come up with? Why does a caste that leap from outside the light radius of the armor lamp instantly into melee range need a handicap? And why does this apply to all stuns? If you think Shotguns + angle grips are too powerful then just remove angle grips from the useable mods. That still doesn't explain why every time a marine equips a rifle, shotgun, smg or pistol they have to wait an entire second to fire it or wield it, with another delay on the wield. At a certain point, xenos players need to learn to play the game.

We're looking at maybe removing unnested delay now in light of the wield delay.

We already have firing delays, nesting delays and now equipping delays. None of these were ever necessary, especially when all xeno castes have enough HP to tank multiple shots from everything but a pointblank buckshot.

Magazine boxes are meant to encourage team resupply and increased use of supply drops.

e looking to decouple supply drops from beacons and maybe adding a soft ammo carrier role for pfcs via a sl allocated item/rig/etc that they give to a PFC.

Want to encourage supply drops? Give more Supply Beacons. They are over priced in vendors and take up too much space for marines to use them, in addition to them being one use items. Get rid of SOs/Overwatch needing to launch Crates and just let the RO or CTs do it from their cargo bay. CTs go SSD more often than not because Req rarely has anything to do post briefing aside from equip late join stragglers and never they get enough points to restock themselves with Tank parts being over priced and just keeping Specs and Gunners fed ammo makes ordering anything else an absolute waste.

Put W-Y intel or precursor artifacts on maps that marines can recover and Req can export for points. Let Req send corpses of Xenos to W-Y for further research. Give CTs anything else to do aside from being chained to their counter top telling marines they ran out of barrel chargers 45 minutes ago.

With 3 webbing 2 armor 5 belt 6 pouch 1 in gun, m41a ammo shouldn't be an issue.
If you're using a shotgun the shotgun belt holds 2 full boxes (50) shells, plus 15 webbing 10 armor is a lot of shotgun ammo. Engineers and medics can carry a small number of reloads via webbing/armor and resupply from fobs/possible ammo carrier soft role.

So, you're gonna strawman and assume that webbing is available for every marine, as is magazine pouches which only about handful of are ever in existence. This also assumes that marines aren't using armor and webbing slots for grenades or carrying extra equipment for support jobs like Engineer or Medic. And all of this fails to acknowledge the fact that most T2s and T3s require multiple full magazine unloaded into them to kill them, and if that xeno can run away they can heal up to full meanwhile the marines are out all the ammo that was tossed away. If you want to reduce how much ammo marines get at the bare minimum you should be tweaking guns so that they are more effective NOT TYING THIS NERF TO ANOTHER NERF THAT EXPLICITLY MAKES ALL GUNS HARDER TO USE IN AN ARENA OF STUN COMBAT

We do listen and we made these changes in response to xenos complaints about the new shotgun meta as well as the long term issues of reqs having to raid prep vendors to supply squads with ammo. The ammo in bag removal is short term to test how the boxes can be utilised without letting players be entirely self sufficient by just massively stocking up on ammo at round start.

You're obviously not listening if this is the response given after months of marines repeatedly bringing up that Crushers have no counter, corpse dragging and devouring still being a bug and the fact that shotguns are the only weapons most xenos even bother to run away from. This is entire patch is a solution looking for a problem, when numerous issues currently exsist in the balance for both sides, and a text book example of why CM should go open source so that all players can view pending changes before they take effect and offer feedback. As it stands this entire update came out of no where, and all we're getting is that another rebalance is coming soon but literally no details about what it contains. And you wonder why the devs have such bad reputations with the bulk of the playerbase.

[Clutch]

>getting hugged>your flashlight goes out.
who's fucking idea was this? it's so non-sensical and breaches the little realism there was left lol

[dylanstrategie]

We locked and moved the previous thread because it was 25 pages long, it's also still linked here for convenience

Ambush castes is not just the Lurker. It's Runner, Sentinel, Drone, Spitter, etc. Generally any caste that would get melted on the frontlines. And there was a clear issue with weapons being pulled too fast for Xenos to react. If you're not ready to fight, you aren't, period. If you wanna be, just wield and you can shoot instantly. Or keep your weapon out for a small delay

We're not adding or removing delays for delay's sake, they're here for precise balance reasons. And this has nothing to do with Xeno tankiness

We are working on a more comprehensive Req/Supply/Loadout update as stated in the roadmap

We want there to be a real trade-off between ammo and extra gear. If you're using your armor slots for grenades, you can't put ammo in here. We want Marines to literally run out of ammo at all in a normal round, instead of having dozens of magazines and being capable of sustained fighting for a small eternity. This also has nothing to do with Xeno stun abilities

We are starting to push out balance changes now that the dev team has been refreshed, I won't comment on the individual items you brought up because we already have enough on our plates internally

[Dauntasa]

We locked and moved the previous thread because it was 25 pages long, it's also still linked here for convenience

you've moved it to a forum that non-staff can't view, though

"Information

You are not authorised to read this forum."

[Dauntasa]

Ambush castes is not just the Lurker. It's Runner, Sentinel, Drone, Spitter, etc. Generally any caste that would get melted on the frontlines. And there was a clear issue with weapons being pulled too fast for Xenos to react. If you're not ready to fight, you aren't, period. If you wanna be, just wield and you can shoot instantly. Or keep your weapon out for a small delay

Okay, so the ammo thing is not a massive problem and I don't see the need to complain about it, but there is a MAJOR problem with the delay change, which is that xeno combat, especially ambushing, revolves around instant, guaranteed ranged knockdowns. Which means that if you walk around with your gun out, you either lose your gun or, if you have a mag harness, get it shunted to your suit slot where you now have a substantial delay on actually pulling it out and firing it. This is unbelievably frustrating and doesn't seem to actually solve any problem other than "getting tackled as a marine only resulting in death 95% of the time instead of 100%". Any xeno that assumed a marine was harmless because he wasn't pointing a gun directly at them was foolish, and it was a mistake to change the game so that they were right instead of simply telling them "look, it's a man with a gun and you have a ranged knockdown, if he stands back up either knock him down again or run away or he's probably going to shoot you". The current situation is that marines are very timid and hate to advance because the first person who goes in always dies and nobody wants to be that guy and have to sit around moaning in deadchat for 2 hours. The dev team said in the townhall that they want to encourage marines to be more aggressive. I was happy when I heard it, that's a great direction for the game to go in. This change is the exact opposite of that, because now, once you get knocked down once, you're dead. You are 100% doomed, even if you still have your gun, because you will always get knocked down again before you can actually fire it.

[solidfury7]

As both a marine and xeno player, I'm very interested to see how this update goes. A lot of people are complaining because the meta is shifting, but I think that is exactly the type of thing which keeps things fresh.

I'm not too clued in on the new ammo system but everything else looks pretty good.

Also anyone who says the crusher is OP needs to really step up their marine game. I've killed them solo before, you just need to fight smart.

If you want to see a broken mechanic, look at tanks on certain maps with artillery. That shit has no counter, even the marine main in me is pained by how broken it is. Being killed off screen with no warning really isnt fun.

[spookydonut]

My bad I thought that forum was viewable

[Dauntasa]

As both a marine and xeno player, I'm very interested to see how this update goes.

I'm not too clued in on the new ammo system but everything else looks pretty good.

Also anyone who says the crusher is OP needs to really step up their marine game. I've killed them solo before, you just need to fight smart.

If you want to see a broken mechanic, look at tanks on certain maps with artillery. That shit has no counter, even the marine main in me is pained by how broken it is. Being killed off screen with no warning really isnt fun.

Playing xeno, the OD tank is a lot scarier than the arty tank. Dying to the arty tank is just a failure of overall intelligence: the hivemind needs to be full of constant updates on its positioning. You'll only get owned if you don't know where it is, it can only cover one spot at a time. You'll only die if you bumble into its firing line by mistake(and even then it'll miss the oneshot unless you stand still or just run in a straight line). And if you actually coordinate, its too slow to avoid getting corner-killed by a group of xenos. The OD tank is a lot more difficult to deal with if it's driven well.

[immaspaceninja]

Spec weapons have a really long delay now due to a combination of delay before wieldig and delay before firing the gun. Even for scout's battlerifle its around 4 seconds.
All spec weapons range from terrible to okay when it comes to defending yourself againt lurkers and such:

GL and RPG wont help you.
Flamer will probably be the cause of you death, because you'll get stunned again and dragged into your own flames.
Sniper has aim reduction at close range and doesn't stun.
And scout is alright if you use impact rounds.

The question is: since that new wield delay barely affects your ability to defend from 'AMBUSHES' with spec weapons, can we expect you to reduce it? ~4 seconds is simply too much.

Oh, it also applies to smartgunners.

[Chaznoodles]

This is hilariously pants. Just what marines needed, another artificial delay in a fast-paced game. Not being able to hump extra ammo in packs is going to be dick, seeing as 90% of xenos castes are bullet sponges. Probably better off just slapping a bayonet and stock on an unloaded weapon and just clicking things that move.

Maybe, instead of nerfing marines into the ground when they start winning, you should focus on balancing xenos so they don't get pantsed every game by competent players.

This now means that pushing is going to be ass, coupled with the barricade nerf which is also ass means you'd better expect more 70-marine Almayer defences because fuck fighting with every disadvantage in the book

[Dauntasa]

The biggest issue I have is that a competent ambush really was already guaranteed death before this change. Like if a lurker went on a lone marine and died to him, it was because the lurker was baaaad. Now, that bad lurker probably still kills that marine, and it's also just made marines even more scared to advance or do anything because being the pointman is an absolute death sentence.

[Davidchan]

We locked and moved the previous thread because it was 25 pages long, it's also still linked here for convenience

Its in a staff only forum that non-staff can't even view. Which, just illustrates the point of staff acting without considering the bigger picture.

Ambush castes is not just the Lurker. It's Runner, Sentinel, Drone, Spitter, etc. Generally any caste that would get melted on the frontlines. And there was a clear issue with weapons being pulled too fast for Xenos to react. If you're not ready to fight, you aren't, period. If you wanna be, just wield and you can shoot instantly. Or keep your weapon out for a small delay

Every single one of these castes (except Drone) has a pounce or spit ability to stun solo marines. They don't need additional handicaps when most of them quiet effortlessly can repeatedly disarm slap a marine and keep them on the floor indefinitely. There is no clear issue with marines drawing weapons too fast when attacked, as if the xeno failed to connect their first attack/stun then they deserve to reap the consequences of a poorly planned or executed ambush. Marines don't get a mulligan if they walk near a facehugger or egg to quickly run away before they are in danger. Drones are not an ambush class and shouldn't be ambushing or attacking marines to begin with except in dire circumstances to defend the hive or prevent nesting breakouts.

We're not adding or removing delays for delay's sake, they're here for precise balance reasons. And this has nothing to do with Xeno tankiness

I don't know how many more ways it can be worded, the delay was added for a poor reason, and further more it affects gameplay outside of ambushes. A spitter on the front line can now keep several marines out of the fight just by spitting wildly at them, now that every stun or disarm is complimented by a second of firing or wielding delay.

We are working on a more comprehensive Req/Supply/Loadout update as stated in the roadmap

What you are or are not working on is irrelevant if what you've just put out is garbage that had no valid reason to exist, and if this was supposed to be complimented by a rework of something else it shouldn't have been released till that rework is finished. You wouldn't outright delete a xeno caste because something to replace it was in the works but not ready yet.

We want there to be a real trade-off between ammo and extra gear. If you're using your armor slots for grenades, you can't put ammo in here. We want Marines to literally run out of ammo at all in a normal round, instead of having dozens of magazines and being capable of sustained fighting for a small eternity. This also has nothing to do with Xeno stun abilities

Marines get so much ammo BECAUSE Xenos have so much health and armor. They heal quickly and take no permanent damage aside from death, unlike marines. If a Marine repeatedly gets a xeno down to 1hp left but the xeno gets away everytime, the xeno gets no debuffs. If a marine is reduced to 1 health repeatedly, odds are they've lost limbs or gear in the process and will never be as strong as when they first deployed because prosthetics are extremely weak and requisitions can't hope to ever resupply every marine to replace their ammo. Xeno stuns are relevant here because when a xeno is in danger of dying, they have numerous stun abilities to prevent marines from injuring them further to run away, just increasing their survivability. Coupled with the atrocious equipping delay, this means that all stuns last 1 second longer, so a queen screech or a crusher running into a FOB and disarm slapping marines leads to marines awkwardly standing around with loaded weapons but unable to fire them because the coders thought it was too hard for Xenos to recoup after stunning marines?

We are starting to push out balance changes now that the dev team has been refreshed, I won't comment on the individual items you brought up because we already have enough on our plates internally

You have no excuse for you actions aside from the fact that you want one side to be nerfed into the ground. It's pretty obvious and the direction the coders are taking is anything but the direction the community as a whole wants to play. And the timing of your foolish endeavor couldn't be worse with a code leak and multiple servers on the verge of going public that feature faction PvP gameplay like what CM features without the inane delays, limitations and pointless nerfs the Devs keep piling on.

[Slduggy]

I understood the Barricade update. The point was to make marines push instead of sitting behind pain onions, I can see how this can be a good thing, rounds that drag are not a good thing. BUT NOW with the wielding and equipping delays marines are encouraged to play slow and setup supply lines and constantly run back to get more ammo and to move forward with their weapons out and equipped, or better yet sit behind fucking barricades so they can't get ambushed at all and have all the ammo they need.

What direction are the devs trying to take this? The change to cades and the change to ammo/wielding/equiping are completely take away any of marines options. You are punished for playing fast and you are punished for playing slow.

Marines only win off the back of braindead aliens. That's not fun.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

Ambush castes is not just the Lurker. It's Runner, Sentinel, Drone, Spitter, etc. Generally any caste that would get melted on the frontlines. And there was a clear issue with weapons being pulled too fast for Xenos to react. If you're not ready to fight, you aren't, period. If you wanna be, just wield and you can shoot instantly. Or keep your weapon out for a small delay

> Lurker : One pounce and you're in crit if it doesn't start drag tackling you and just slash. Also invisibility. Also good enough speed to run away if it fails to kill you the first pounce.
> Runner : One lucky tackle after pounce and you're dead unless RNG loves you. Also has more than enough speed to just yakety sax you if it fails the first few tackles. Can also hide
> Sentinel, Spitter : M4 doesn't do enough damage, and Buckshot doesn't have the range. Only thing that can deal with them is Slug, and it depends on them not spitting neuro on you first. If they do, you're dead.
> Drone : Drone is an ambush caste ? lul. Anyway, Frenzy+tackle has an absurd rate of knocking you down. And again, one tackle and you're dead.

Keep your weapon out means you risk dropping it and getting dragged 5 tiles away from it before you can pick it up again and shoot (we're also counting in the wielding delay here).

If xeno can't react to someone pulling their gun out, wielding it, then shoot; then they should die, because they either misplayed, or the marine in question just made a good play. I don't see why removing this risk is good for xeno, when they already don't need it to kill someone 1v1.

[Sleepy Retard]

If xenos are dying in a 1v1 ambush, perhaps the xeno is at fault. No one who actually plays this game would come to the conclusion that this is good update or that this was needed. I never felt that xenos being punished for their low skill was an issue, but I can tell that the devs are moving back to their unpopular and more comfortable 70-30 schtick.

I feel as if this ammo case update wasn't actually...fully made. Play a round or two of requisition. I have no need to point out the current issue with it, but it's laughable and easy to figure out if you play the game.

[dylanstrategie]

I've seen plenty of Xenos die in 1v1 due to nearly instantly pulled and aimed buckshot shotguns. It's gotten bad enough that I've seen a litany of complaints about it

If the gun is already out, it's fair game, the Xeno is warned, but it makes no sense that a Xenomorph should fear approaching a disarmed Marine unless they're a Lurker

[Slduggy]

I've seen plenty of Xenos die in 1v1 due to nearly instantly pulled and aimed buckshot shotguns. It's gotten bad enough that I've seen a litany of complaints about it

If the gun is already out, it's fair game, the Xeno is warned, but it makes no sense that a Xenomorph should fear approaching a disarmed Marine unless they're a Lurker

But pounce disarms the marine anyway so now they have nothing to fear.

[Herac]

Basically just going to reiterate that I don't have any issue with this update, I've played a few rounds as a PFC and I've found no difference.
-Ammo boxes are a nice feature, req having to rely on squads for ammo/flares made little sense and they tidy things up a bit.

-Wield delay on shotgun is noticable but as covered the a-grip counteracts that and besides if you're with your squad you'll have other marines to cover you. This is a team based game.

-Having played a few rounds I've found aim delay on the shotgun to be a non-issue, I have a feeling that it's actually shorter than the wield delay (for shotgun) so myabe it only applies if you remove your weapon from storage and try to one hand it?

-The no ammo in backpacks/satchels didn't have much impact on me but after consideration it is a little hard to swallow, I'll be happy if you're allowed to take ammo again (just for logics sake) but it hasn't changed my playstyle.

Removing the unnesting delay makes sense to me, considering how punishing getting captured and infected is now anyway and people have to put their lights on before they can shoot which acts as a soft delay, essentially.

As a marine and xeno player yeah, the shotgun meta was getting a bit unreal. I'm glad of these changed, marines aren't getting 'nerfed into the ground' just because you can't solo runners any more. Shotguns are still a viable counter you just have to be wielding them, which only costs you movement speed. Lets not forget that marines have recived tanks, free mortars, and you can fit 4 cades into a 2 tile area now. Marines will come up with a new meta to work around this and I hope it's a meta more focused on team work.

[Sleepy Retard]

I've seen plenty of Xenos die in 1v1 due to nearly instantly pulled and aimed buckshot shotguns. It's gotten bad enough that I've seen a litany of complaints about it

If the gun is already out, it's fair game, the Xeno is warned, but it makes no sense that a Xenomorph should fear approaching a disarmed Marine unless they're a Lurker

Okay, you lost me. These issues you've pointed out are skill based. As a lurker I haven't had a problem with disarmed marines. Why should a lurker, of all the ""ambush classes"" (this including a goddamn drone, a worker, a non combat caste, a caste focused on working, again a caste who's main goal is not combat but working, unlike a lurker who COMBATS) be worried of a disarmed marines and not the others?

The actual serious ambush castes have instant disables to use against Marines, they initiate the fight. If they have an instant disable, and they choose when to fight....why are xenos having problems with instant pulling shotguns if they choose the fight?

[immaspaceninja]

I've seen plenty of Xenos die in 1v1 due to nearly instantly pulled and aimed buckshot shotguns. It's gotten bad enough that I've seen a litany of complaints about it

If the gun is already out, it's fair game, the Xeno is warned, but it makes no sense that a Xenomorph should fear approaching a disarmed Marine unless they're a Lurker

Why did ALL guns get the delay?

Why does the delay applies if i pick up the gun from the ground after i've been stunned by a beno?

Why are you saying that xeno gets no warning when he can just see shotgun on marine's sprite? Why are you saying that xeno does not expect A MARINE, A SOLDIER WHO ALWAYS HAS A GUN, to retaliate?

[Dauntasa]

I've seen plenty of Xenos die in 1v1 due to nearly instantly pulled and aimed buckshot shotguns. It's gotten bad enough that I've seen a litany of complaints about it

If the gun is already out, it's fair game, the Xeno is warned, but it makes no sense that a Xenomorph should fear approaching a disarmed Marine unless they're a Lurker

They're a marine. They aren't disarmed, they're quite heavily armed and every xeno knows it. If you fail to get your instant, guaranteed ranged knockdown, which every single non-drone caste xeno except defender has, on the marine before he gets his gun out and shoots you, it's because you have screwed up. Let's say you're a runner. You spy a lone marine with his gun holstered. In order to win this fight, you need to middle click on him before he can click his gun, press Z, and then click on you. You have to either miss and then fail to run away before he shoots you, or you have to fail to do one thing before he does 3 things. This was already in the xeno's favour, there was no need to add an extra delay to the marine on top of them having to do 3 times as many actions.

Hell, let's walk through every caste(except drone castes, who will actually probably die here but they're drones so, you know, they shouldn't be fighting anyway).

Sentinels, boilers, praetorians and spitters literally don't have to ever be anywhere near Mr Buckshot. They can just spit at him and run away if he tries to close the distance. This is one action and fucking it up doesn't even put you in danger. Even if you miss as a boiler, the guy can't follow you because of the stun acid on the ground. If you're a spitter and you get killed by one dude with buckshot, you blew it and you deserved to die.

Lurkers do basically the same thing as runners except they have a lot more time to aim their pounce because they're invisible and the guy probably won't even see them before he gets got. Ravagers won't actually die(a young one might crit) to that buckshot so even if they fuck up, they can just run away or slap the guy's shit while he's pumping it.

Warriors have their big lunge-grab and also won't necessarily die if they fuck it up so they can just turn agility on and scoot away to safety, or disarm the guy and thump him.

Crushers are the exact opposite of an ambush caste and a young one takes like 4 buckshot PBs to even kill.

Defenders might actually have a hard time running up on a guy with buckshot, but they are literally the only fighting alien who does, and they're very tank so I wouldn't describe them as an ambusher.

Ambushing was already very weighted towards xenos and forgiving to them when they managed to fail anyway. There really was no need to introduce a delay specifically to weight things even more in their favour, and the ramifications that this delay had on combat and gameflow in general were highly negative and the opposite of the stated direction that the devs wanted the game to go in. I don't see the need for vitriol or anger here, you guys generally do a good job and I don't think that people should jump straight to "DEVS ARE IDIOTS" whenever they don't like something. But this change was a mistake.

[Chaznoodles]

I've seen plenty of Xenos die in 1v1 due to nearly instantly pulled and aimed buckshot shotguns. It's gotten bad enough that I've seen a litany of complaints about it

If the gun is already out, it's fair game, the Xeno is warned, but it makes no sense that a Xenomorph should fear approaching a disarmed Marine unless they're a Lurker

I've seen no sign of any major complaints regarding this. I have, however, seen nearly every player complain about pounce stuns meaning instadeath, not to forget every other stun xenos have.

Enjoy fighting any caste with neurospit now, not to forget defending against queens, knockdown acid spray, disarms or superquick pounces. It's almost like devs are actively trying to push people to the other servers what with the code leak, by making the game unenjoyable for an entire side, especially in the current climate. Making excuses about "We have more plans!" is pointless if you're getting rid of your playerbase right now.

[Sneakyr]

Putting aside any opinions I may or not have regarding balance issues, any "solution" (I put some sarcastic quotation marks in there for ya) that involves click delay is inherently a big piece of ass to experience. If you need to nerf, for the love of god, don't make it incredibly annoying to use a weapon and instead find another way. I actually, controversially, enjoyed the little bit of PFC I played while the majority (if not all, I don't know, I didn't play THAT much) of click delay was gone or unnoticeable, especially on picking things up.

[Casany]

I don’t understand the devs.

I’ve said it before, the whole point is to make xeno playable even by a fucking vegetable.

It was a SKILL issue that was CAUASED BY THE DEVS! The devs making xenos so powerful created a fucking skill vacuum and now you’re seeing the effect that has on the game. But instead of keeping it as is and allowing the skill to catch up (a change in META, you could say) like they do with marines, they just nerf. Now there’s another skill vacuum and soon enough there will be new nerfs to account for that.

What the fuck, especially right after a goddamn leak and new TG hosted CM