There is no more point.

[Azmodan412]

I haven't posted in a long while, but I want to bring up a valid point. According to the change log on 07112015, Marine weapons received a damage buff, I know this is less than the 200% damage test, but I do not like it one bit. I would like to enumerate my reasons why.

1) It encourages the Marine team to Rambo. With buffed damage, any marine with enough balls can go and kill most, maybe even all aliens singlehandedly, wiping out any fun the alien team might have had.

2) Even with the sped-up alien evolution, it still doesn't count. It may take fifteen minutes to evolve from larva to Tier 3 with a diligent queen, but there is a drawback. Connecting with the first reason, Marines can deploy anywhere between 20-30 minutes with a quick enough briefing and on-spot command staff, leading to Ramboing.

3) Tier 3s are no longer a threat, even without a SADAR knockdown. In my opinion, Tier 3s are supposed to be the ultimate, strong and difficult to take down, with exception of the Boiler. With the damage upgrade, they are as weak as runners to even a single marine.

In conclusion, there is no more point in playing as Xeno if all the fun via tactics is sapped out due to damage boosts with the Marines. I love the site and I wish to see it get better and better, but this is turning me off and I almost came to the point of abandoning the server.

[RadiantFlash]

I play both alien, and marine and I don't agree entirely with what your saying.

1) While I do agree with the first point, some amount of ramboing is inevitable, no matter what you do with the damage.
2) Marines typically deploy 17-24ish minutes in, if they've got proper command staff and RO (really it depends on the briefing as you said), but thats still plenty of evolution time.
3) T3's, are very much a threat. It's simply that the aliens can't rambo against more then 2 marines anymore. It forces the aliens to work togethor to handle the marines (As they should in a /hive/), or suffer because of it. And even so, being alone as a xeno is possible. You just have to not get shot, and pick off stragglers.

To be honest the damage upgrade makes guns feel like actual guns, and can also be dentrimental the marines at times. A single unlucky bullet will break a chest bone, damage internal organs, and kill a marine in a minute without medical attention. Even with a medic, they have to go back to the sulaco for surgery, because they won't be able to stay wake properly, let alone fight.

[Azmodan412]

Well, this is mostly just my opinion.

[Tristan63]

To be honest you are true in the sense that the ground map is bad for this tactic with no vents for any form of attack at all. BUT I still have hope for the deadlueous (ik i spelled wrong) map in that aliens will be able to be truly "Alien"

[Wickedtemp]

I play both alien, and marine and I don't agree entirely with what your saying.

1) While I do agree with the first point, some amount of ramboing is inevitable, no matter what you do with the damage.
2) Marines typically deploy 17-24ish minutes in, if they've got proper command staff and RO (really it depends on the briefing as you said), but thats still plenty of evolution time.
3) T3's, are very much a threat. It's simply that the aliens can't rambo against more then 2 marines anymore. It forces the aliens to work togethor to handle the marines (As they should in a /hive/), or suffer because of it. And even so, being alone as a xeno is possible. You just have to not get shot, and pick off stragglers.

To be honest the damage upgrade makes guns feel like actual guns, and can also be dentrimental the marines at times. A single unlucky bullet will break a chest bone, damage internal organs, and kill a marine in a minute without medical attention. Even with a medic, they have to go back to the sulaco for surgery, because they won't be able to stay wake properly, let alone fight.

1) You're right, ramboing is inevitable, and like this round that just ended, a SINGLE RAMBO MARINE who happened to have the fuckin' SADAR pretty much wiped out the Hive. Now you see the problem.
2) The evolution time could be completely done away with, instant T3 right from larva, and it still wouldn't matter. Marines can easily kill any T3 on their own. It takes only ONE marine to do this.
3) No, they really aren't. If there's a small group of T3's (let's go with five, because that's normally how many I see) then the ten or so marines can easily just throw a couple grenades, or use the SADAR, and now they're all dead.

It's difficult to 'just pick off the stragglers' when the stragglers have enough firepower to kill every xeno on the map, by themselves.

EDIT: And the whole "But friendly fire is worse now, so marines will be more careful!" No, they won't. It's just that the victims of friendly fire are now out of the round for good. There will not be a difference, marines will still end up accidentally shooting each other without caring about it, as they've always done. Because as long as they kill the Xenos, they win, regardless of losses. Also, this only encourages marines to go alone to avoid friendly fire. I mean, hell, Balto Dreg killed most of the T3 Xenos we had by themselves, AND the Queen by going Lone-Wolf with their SADAR!

[RadiantFlash]

1) You're right, ramboing is inevitable, and like this round that just ended, a SINGLE RAMBO MARINE who happened to have the fuckin' SADAR pretty much wiped out the Hive. Now you see the problem.
2) The evolution time could be completely done away with, instant T3 right from larva, and it still wouldn't matter. Marines can easily kill any T3 on their own. It takes only ONE marine to do this.
3) No, they really aren't. If there's a small group of T3's (let's go with five, because that's normally how many I see) then the ten or so marines can easily just throw a couple grenades, or use the SADAR, and now they're all dead.

It's difficult to 'just pick off the stragglers' when the stragglers have enough firepower to kill every xeno on the map, by themselves.

1) I don't quite see the problem actually, because a single alien with spit, could have taken the marine out. Or a carrier. While the sadar is instant knockdown, so is spit. Not to mention aliens have the advantage of being in the dark, and spitting, where as the sadar user can only shoot at what he can see.
2) A good marine can kill a decent t3. A good t3,can wipe a squad of decent marines out. It goes both ways. Even more so for carriers.
3) If the T3's are bunching up togethor, to be hit by one sadar, they're doing something wrong. If they're relaxing around, getting hit by grenades, they're stillll doing something wrong.

[Wickedtemp]

1) I don't quite see the problem actually, because a single alien with spit, could have taken the marine out. Or a carrier. While the sadar is instant knockdown, so is spit. Not to mention aliens have the advantage of being in the dark, and spitting, where as the sadar user can only shoot at what he can see.
2) A good marine can kill a decent t3. A good t3,can wipe a squad of decent marines out. It goes both ways. Even more so for carriers.
3) If the T3's are bunching up togethor, to be hit by one sadar, they're doing something wrong. If they're relaxing around, getting hit by grenades, they're stillll doing something wrong.

1) No, spit can either knock-down for a SHORT amount of time while doing MINIMAL damage if any, or you can use acid spit and just do a bit of damage. Whereas the SADAR is an instant-knockdown and does so much damage it might as well be an instakill for everything. It functions as one. And just because the marines need flashlights doesn't negate the fact they have access to an insta-kill superweapon that allows a single marine to wipe out the entire hive by themselves.
2) A good marine can, and has, killed MULTIPLE T3's, we've just seen that happen. Meanwhile a good T3 can probably take out a handful of marines if they're lucky, it's heavily circumstantial.
3) Normally they're attacking, it's sometimes pointless to even infect anymore because so few people have their prefs for Xeno on. It takes one grenade to do damage and knockdown, then they're killed rather easily. Rinse and repeat until all attacking xenos are dead.

[RadiantFlash]

1) That short time, is A: more then enough time to run forwards, andd tackle slash the marine, B: melt the Sadar and back out, C: Drag the sadar away, while another alien jumps on em.
It's damage will instant kill a runner. As for a drone and a sentinel, I confess I've never tried to use the sadar on it. Why would a marine waste a rocket on such a soft target in the first place?
2) I've seen two T3's working in tandom, wipe out two squads plenty of times, when actually working togethor. If a single marine engages an alien by out of position, well it will likely die. Same thing easily happens to marines. It's all heavily circumstantial on both sides, not just the marine one.
3) Attacking a fortified position without proper weeds, queen screech, boiler bombard, or rapid carrier cover, is just stupid. If you don't have atleast one of those things, you really should not be assaulting the FOB, or a similarly fortified post.

[Wickedtemp]

1) That short time, is A: more then enough time to run forwards, andd tackle slash the marine, B: melt the Sadar and back out, C: Drag the sadar away, while another alien jumps on em.
It's damage will instant kill a runner. As for a drone and a sentinel, I confess I've never tried to use the sadar on it. Why would a marine waste a rocket on such a soft target in the first place?
2) I've seen two T3's working in tandom, wipe out two squads plenty of times, when actually working togethor. If a single marine engages an alien by out of position, well it will likely die. Same thing easily happens to marines. It's all heavily circumstantial on both sides, not just the marine one.
3) Attacking a fortified position without proper weeds, queen screech, boiler bombard, or rapid carrier cover, is just stupid. If you don't have atleast one of those things, you really should not be assaulting the FOB, or a similarly fortified post.

1) It's not NEARLY enough time to melt ANYTHING. Takes a good several minutes to melt weapons. It's honestly not much of a big enough time window to do much at all. By the time you've run up to slash them, they're likely on their feet and they'll just shoot you with the SADAR without concern for personal safety, because when have marines ever genuinely cared about friendly fire or accidentally blowing themselves up? They use CQC explosions all the time.
2) Was this within the last week? Because before last week I've seen that PLENTY of times. Now with the damage buff, all it takes is one marine to wipe out both T3's, they don't even have to be necessarily GOOD. This isn't an exxageration, this actually happens. Most assaults I've seen are only successful when the Xenos have close to the same number as the marines.
3) The Queen going into battle just for the screech is the fastest way for the Queen to get killed early. Boilers are slow and extremely fragile, honestly probably won't even take more than five bullets from a rifle to kill one, from what I've seen they're too slow and fragile to be of much use.

And it doesn't even matter if the post is fortified or not. Again, due to the damage buff, a marine without ANY cover can successfully 1v1 a ravager purely due to the advantage of speed, just running and gunning.

[Wickedtemp]

Just played another round, xeno victory, yay...

I also found out it takes seven bullets from a rifle to kill a praetorian. Seven. You know, the big T3 aliens that are supposed to be a real threat? Yeah, not really a threat any longer if you can kill four of them before you have to reload.

[Toroic]

One xeno should be more powerful than 1 marine, because xenos are usually outnumbered close to 4 to 1.

Predators are absurdly durable in comparison to xenos, because they are outnumbered.

Xenos being mostly melee range is a huge disadvantage.

Speaking to boilers and crushers, I believe that boilers have some major design flaws that make them situational at best.

Crushers just seem to be dipshits 90% of the time. They evolve from runners though, what do you expect?

[Wickedtemp]

The fact of the matter is, one average marine can kill one average xeno. This is a problem.

Also, if the marines attack early, there's no hope for the Xenos... We had FOUR marines, and we took out every xeno in the Hive. No deaths until the end and that was because of friendly fire, and one suicide because of being infected. Again, this is a problem.

[TopHatPenguin]

Perhaps we could keep the same damage etc but just buff the rate and amount of times a xenos hide would deflect bullets? It might be a solution at least so that xenos would be better in the 1:1 combat scenarios.

[Lostmixup]

Perhaps we could keep the same damage etc but just buff the rate and amount of times a xenos hide would deflect bullets? It might be a solution at least so that xenos would be better in the 1:1 combat scenarios.

Sounds horrible. Too much RNG. Honestly, the higher damage speeds up the rounds and makes xeno's have to play smarter. Everyone always talks about how marines rambo about (basically doing their job), but what about xeno's? That's all they do as well is rambo about. I don't see it as the worst thing in the world that xenos have to play slightly smarter than they did before, picking off marines one by one instead of doing a full frontal attack that really doesn't make sense for them to do lore wise anyway.

I say give xenos more stealth options (as well as marines too please, some basic stuff would be great). Make it so runners can also possibly hide by sitting still on grass or water, as well as on weeds. Give them more options to be the stealthy hunters they were meant to be.

*Also quit it with the 1, 2, 3 stuff. Looks childish as all hell.

[coroneljones]

Stealth options would be nice
Xenos are usually all about stealth,speed,hordes,numbers and such stuff


Also i belive the SADAR might be removed once space maps are a thing

[Lostmixup]

Stealth options would be nice
Xenos are usually all about stealth,speed,hordes,numbers and such stuff


Also i belive the SADAR might be removed once space maps are a thing

Also, with xeno's being weaker it could mean that more of them will spawn when the round starts or something, to give more of that horde mentality.

[Arachnidnexus]

One issue is that xenos didn't get a speed buff and just got an evolve timer decrease. Even before the damage buffs it was rather easy for a marine to 1v1 a Spitter because of its low movement speed if it got caught out in a place that was not heavily reinforced with resin fortifications. Not it's similarly easy for that to happen even with a Praetorian because it can no longer tank as many shots. I am curious to see what the actual win rates post-changes are, though, and I feel like the removal of the SADAR will buff alien survival since the SADAR right now is pretty much a one shot one kill on any xeno.

[coroneljones]

Maybe a speed buff to the hunting castes and a minor one to drones and sentinels?
It would make sense for hunting castes to have the fastes xenos

[TopHatPenguin]

Maybe a speed buff to the hunting castes and a minor one to drones and sentinels?
It would make sense for hunting castes to have the fastes xenos

Hunting castes are already fairly fast, I think the slower castes are more likely going to need the speed buff if anything due to the lower health.

[Wickedtemp]

Honestly, I don't think numbers will even help when all it takes is one marine to kill the third tier xenos... Evolution speed doesn't matter, numbers doesn't matter. Attack wise, the xenos are fine. Strong enough to take down marines and all, but the issue is that, as long as there's room to run around -which is EXTREMELY abundant on the Weyland colony map- the marine can easily out maneuver and shoot.

Edit: Actually I think a speed buff could solve most of the issues... CQC the Xenos stand more of a chance because they can corner marines. With wide open spaces, the main issue is that marines can just dance around the Xeno's while shooting and the xeno can do jack-shit about it, they can't even run away.

[Voldirs]

Its already a lottery, would you hit a running runner or some friendly which will decide to move his ass in front of your muzzle. Its already quite fast for 2D game, no need to buff speed for hunter castes.

[Wickedtemp]

Runners and Hunters don't need a speed boost, but the other castes sure do. At least so that they can't get yakity saxxed by a lone wolf marine. As a ravager, if you miss with your charge, you're done. You can't back up fast enough, you're dead.

I think all xenos, save for the runners and hunters and possibly the drones, get a speed boost, the Boiler would end up the slowest. Perhaps a SLIGHT health boost so 2 bullets won't kill them.

Then, so Crushers have more of a chance, making the charge toggle-able instead of passive would be nice, so they can run without charging. It's difficult to navigate a long distance when you can only move in a straight line, turning means you fall over. You can go to 'walk' but that's abysmally slow, so either that gets a massive speed buff or the charge is toggle-able and drains plasma while active.

Any thoughts on this?

[Sadokist]

honestly just read the first point and not the rest cuz I can't trust any of the other points are any less ridiculous. I've never seen a marine highhandedly rambo the entire group of aliens. if it were that easy the Marine wins would be through the roof. As of lately they've been pretty even or lesser so on the standard map. the prison map has been causing discrepancy though because the aliens are getting owned on it. as far as the standard map goes, if aliens want to win more the staff is gonna have to sway the marines to stop defending on the Sulaco as much as they do. the major problem is turtling.

[Wickedtemp]

honestly just read the first point and not the rest cuz I can't trust any of the other points are any less ridiculous. I've never seen a marine highhandedly rambo the entire group of aliens. if it were that easy the Marine wins would be through the roof. As of lately they've been pretty even or lesser so on the standard map. the prison map has been causing discrepancy though because the aliens are getting owned on it. as far as the standard map goes, if aliens want to win more the staff is gonna have to sway the marines to stop defending on the Sulaco as much as they do. the major problem is turtling.

Marines are winning more because they CAN wipe out a good chunk of the Hive by themselves. Again, while playing as a praetorian I counted the number of times it took for them to kill me. Seven bullets from a rifle. Do you have ANY IDEA how easy it is for a group of marines to just wipe everything out when it only takes 7 bullets to kill the stronger members of the Hive? Hell, ONE marine can 1v1 a T3, this is evident simply by damage output.

[Disco Dalek]

Just want to add my two cents as a medic. I have seen a LOT of skull and rib fractures since the weapons buff. There have been many rounds in which most of the injuries I see are caused by friendly fire. I really can't imagine a group of more than three or four marines being able to avoid putting a single bullet into a friendly while under attack from more than just one alien. Marines haven't exactly become perfect killing machines all of a sudden.