I said it in the last thread, and it was touched on by Ihatethisengine, but I’ll say it again.
Sometimes, even if you’re not hunting survs, you will just die to them. You’ll run into a bad spot, they’ll come from a strange angle, and you’re alone against two survs with decent guns. God forbid one has a Mar-40. In this situation, a lot of the times, you’re fine.
A small portion of the time, you just fucking die. They chase you down because they’re brave or competent and realize two guys versus one drone is an easy fight and that’s it. Now you’re back in xeno queue for 30 minutes watching yourself go from position 4 to 8 to 6 to 9 to 4 again. Getting sent to xeno queue after death, especially because of a mistake you made 10 minutes in, is miserable. It’s easily the worst, worst part of being a xeno player.
I don’t think punishing people who don’t want to survhunt or play drone is the answer. The answer is to give actual incentive or reward to doing so. Maybe drones get their pick of T2s earlier than the rest of the hive, or doing certain actions pre-drop rewards a small amount of evo points. I don’t know if this is balanced or if it’s even a feasibly good idea, but forcing people to play things they don’t want will be miserable.
Feels something like, “oops, sorry marine players. Nobody really wanted to play corpsman this round so you aren’t allowed to deploy until three of them wake up.”
That and allowing damaged Xenomorphs to evolve pre-marine drop would be good. Right now hunting Survivors is punishing, given it may make you lose out on an evolution.
I think whichever marine gets to the DS first, belts themselves, and watches YouTube for 13 minutes should get spec gear
That way they’re having fun! The people who wait and get geared up and sit through brief are doing “chores!” (and are clearly idiots for not doing the optimal play of doing nothing/expending any energy at all/having the game focused)
we shouldn’t expect people to have to do unfun things just so they can enjoy themselves/do better!
E:for the record, in 1200 hours of xeno I have NEVER spent more than 1 minute AFK. I ghost if I’m going to be away for longer. I had more respect for my fellow xenos than that.
I think you’re trying to equate getting T3 by AFKing with this example, but it’s a pretty salient point honestly, we absolutely should not give specialist to the person who spend all their time gearing up/by ‘contribution’ because it would effectively force everyone into a race of doing things they may not actually want to do just for the opportunity at maybe getting an upgrade.
Like; if we made constructing things as a xeno grant evo (just as an example of direct reward for contribution) you are now increasingly disadvantaged if you don’t want to; as Mens said, ‘clicking snow’ for 20 minutes-- you have to be spending every second from join til drop planting walls if you want to get to actually play the caste you want, optimization goes from an optional strategy to secure wins to a mandatory gate to enjoy the game at all.
That being said that also doesn’t mean all optimizations should be pre-baked into the game either, if you just remove all the interesting items that xenos are supposed/incentivized to melt early on then you kinda kill every reason to actually explore or look at the maps, you reduce them to purely fighting arenas because there’s just no reason to actually interact with them beyond their value as battlespaces.
Xenos’ main resources are larva and time, and so if you simply remove the timesinks they are then boosted to do other things (like jump survs etc).
Why do you think some players are better than others? If you like hunting survs, no one stops you. If you aren’t sick of briefings, please attend. People can engage the game in many different ways. Some people enjoy playing support, some only enjoy playing big bad aliens.
I have 2.5k hours on xeno and I spent like half of it AFK, so we are even.
In general yes people should be rewarded over punished. And as google mentioned, what the reward and/or punishment is matters a lot. The recent thoughts have been giving the slots to those who do chores, blocking evo to those not doing chores, using admins on those not doing chores, and letting queen decide who should get the T3s. All of which have some problems.
The problem has been around for years. Possibly since CM started. I for sure don’t have any good idea. My mind can only think on something like adding flair to your chiv in some system that recognized you do chores so others can see you work hard, or after round facts. Meta crap that doesn’t matter like jellies.
If the survhunters stick together (so theres multiple survhunters) and don’t charge the survs head on, the survhunters live 20 times more, even if they are new. More people survive if you call out random survhunters, then if you don’t - and it’s very unlikely you will be chosen on average out of the whole hive unless it’s lowpop (in which, 3 survhunters minimum is more then enough to deal with 2 survivors). A good thing to add to the announcement is - “Don’t approach the survivors if you aren’t with your allies - stay on weeds, avoid silly confrontation”. Survivors win if they get approached 1 by 1. Think of it as working to help your team by fighting the enemy, not a chore.
Keep in mind the teammates that do hunt survs a lot don’t want you or themselves to die too, they will help you - i don’t think people would generally be opposed to the idea if they weren’t afraid, not because it’s boring. And anxiety is normal in life, but should you as a leader make your team abandon their duty to the hive out of it alone, if it brings a greater risk to others lives who want to help you and their allies much more? In rp it makes sense too!
Killing survs is completely fine, especially if there’s not an overwhelming amount of survhunters - even then it’s fine because they are trying to kill you with every trick they know. Often, having more then 1 or 2 survhunters is WAY better then having just 1 or 2 - keep in mind those survhunters want to live too generally! It’s working for your team. Someone has to do it - and on average you won’t be picked. Usually it goes a lot faster too for everyone involved, if there’s more survhunters.
Survhunting is just normal gameplay. It’s like fighting marines. It’s punishment if they are lockerhiding sure (remove lockerhiders!!), but if they are walking around then it’s just normal gameplay. Keep in mind there is many times the game forces you to play when you don’t want to - not fob siege luckily, but surgery gameplay, sometimes sieges feel like the absolute worst thing ever. For most people, they avoid survivor out of fear, not out of “oh this is so boring!” and it’s fine to be afraid especially if it’s just 1 or 2 survhunters. But if theres many survhunters, it’s a good way for new players who haven’t tried the system to start learning how it works in a much safer and more controlled manner. - it’s just 5 to 10 minutes of active fighting, which goes faster the better you play.
Plus, if you are truly afraid of survhunting, you can build and someone else can be chosen. That’s a way to get out of your mission reasonably.
Plus you can’t force people to evo, until like when all the t1 castes are available. And at that point, survhunting is literal easymode. Still feels annoying if ppl would avoid evoing to ANY caste just to avoid a necessary responsibility - and i don’t think it’s protected by rules to order them to do something except for by literally rules lawyering the system which is like uuuh taht should be an exception (you shouldn’t stay a larva when you are required to do something) . But if they do evo it’s an easy way to make them go do stuff.
Xeno queue is relatively small at roundstart. That is the best time to die since you are likely to get back in the round the quickest.
You’d be surprised how effective drones are if they outnumber the survs 3 to 1. Because at that point it simply does not matter how skilled the player is. Only reason survs live as long as they do now in the open, is that they get to 1v1 drones who want to play the game.
Edit: also while we are on the screech part. It simply does not matter if she has it, if there are no supporting xenoes. She still only has 500 hp with no armor, and she might get one of the five survs killing her.
Really having trouble finding a way to feel bad for Queens who feel the need to scream and banish to get people to do CHORES so they can increase their winrate.
The game is absolutely winnable without xenos doing any kind of taxes and survs are entirely optional. And, realistically, if you ask nicely, about 80% of the hive will do something to help, and won’t AFK. Is it a bit harder to win with some xenos AFKing? Sure. And I agree that we should be doing whatever possible to make sure that no one’s punished for playing the game (allowing evo when xenos are injured, maybe you could even refund larva who are dead to survs to keep the queue fast early on?). But at the end of the day, if people don’t want to build (carpal tunnel simulator, speaking as a Queenmain) and slash tables and melt junk, they shouldn’t be punished for that.
If you’re good at the game, you find a way to win WITHOUT making your hive miserable. If you can’t do that, it’s a skill issue.
If I don’t see my hive building for me, I’ll core at a choke because it cuts out like 90% of the building, and I’ve had a lot of success doing that. There are loads of strategies like this that allow you to win without requiring xenos to be doing chores in their video game if they don’t find them fun.
If someone doesn’t want to play Xeno, they don’t have to play Xeno. Xeno is the minority faction and requires all hands on deck to clear the area and prep the field to play. Marines don’t have that. If you have something to do you can latejoin by observing at round start and then turning Xeno on later.
Marines get the option to AFK. Xenos don’t because AFKing is detrimental to everyone’s experience as you describe.
Marines can win without AP ammo, or OB. This means nothing at all. Everyone can win at any point doing anything.
If Marines bring everything to the table to try and win then there is nothing wrong with the Hive doing the same? If someone doesn’t want to do what is required before Marines drop then they can latejoin as Larva.
You are justifying half assing. This is a TDM which automatically makes the game competetive in a sense. Loosing is only fun if you think you did a good job and did your best, if you do shit, afk and lose its not fun, especially so when you see your teamates afking. No one enjoys playing on weaker team and doing all the bullshit chores alone. Its a team effort.
Yes you can win while afking, because marines can just not deploy. Theres a reason more fun is had when everyone prepares. Be it DnD or any other game.
If you want to watch videos go watch them and late join to the game later.
I agree with most of your post because i don’t think people should be forced to build - that’s just a chore even if it’s super vital to success of the hive. But I don’t think you should lump survhunting into that same boat. If you don’t have people working with your team while survhunting, you will have more people die - and as a beno it should just be default to have a decent sized team go help survhunt. It’s not a chore by any means, it’s just dangerous especially if your group is small.
So making the group big by default is the best thing you can do to help less people die and make it less dangerous. Since noone’s lives matters more then anyone elses.
I don’t think it’s winnable without building unless something catastrophic happens to the marine side. But the queen can do most of the building. I don’t think people would play roundstart queen unless they like building, too.
This can be very untrue especially on lowpop. Noone wants to have to beg for help either - that’s not fun. It’s better to just assign jobs and have people do it imo. That way it’s stress free for everyone