Assymetrical Ways to Make Playing Xeno More Forgiving

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The intent of this thread is as such: I think regardless of any balance, marine will always be fun to play. I do not think that is true for xenos. Let’s accomplish a baseline fix for xenos that makes it more inherently fun

I have reviewed some threads.

Xenos are not particularly scary to me as a Marine main. Xeno also sucks ass to play (for me, at least). If they make 1 mistake, they’re stuck in larva queue for an hour. If they’re not optimal with every movement and decision, they’re dead. Meanwhile, I can (and have) die 16 times as a Marine and seen it through to round-end.

I would like to discuss ways to make xeno less cock&ball torture to play while also maintaining balance and fun.

The lack of tunneling caps, which I was never here for, makes sense. It was unfun for marines just off reading about it.

I think the ideal many many development cycles before I ever even heard of CM-SS13, would have been to keep both sides powerful. I want to make xenos scary again, regardless of whether or not Tyrone ‘Blackbeard’ is online; I don’t want to make xenos scary in response to 3-4 players being online, I want to make xenos scary in a way that’s balanced regardless of Research/CAS/etcetera.

Please use this thread to highlight BOTH of the following:

1.) Ways you can make xeno less cock&ball torture (for me personally that’s increasing xeno spawns)

2.) Ways you can keep the game fun for marines

Here are a few small ideas from me:

Refund 0.5 larva to xenos if a Young-XX dies

Passive larva generation for Queen being on ovi (sucks ass for our brave Queen players though, not a big fan of this idea)

Passive larva generation for majority of xenos fighting outside of CAS cover

Passive larva generation for one of the comms towers being down, forcing marines to maintain both

How do I keep the game fun for marines in response to such changes? Give them back some of their toys. Make research less CBT for researchers, un-nerf M10, etc etc. Lot of just “revert” PRs that can be done tbh.

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  1. Permanent evilution, even if Queen is off-ovi, slowed down to 0.5 perhaps. The fun of Xenos evolving shouldn’t be tied to the Queen being enslaved in ovipositor.

  2. Add a way to revive dead xenos.Through Gardener Drone, with a revival fruit, perhaps? Why is it OK for marines to revive, but not for Xenos to revive if their bodies are recovered?

  3. Adapt Xenos to Z-level. We have many issues with skills that don’t work through Zlevels, namely, Oppressor Abduction for example. Also, Hivelords should be able to build multiple height walls, so they provide cover across Z-levels.

  4. Marines who get capped should NOT control the larva. They should go to the back of the queue, the larva should go to whoever was first in the Larva queue. I do not care if the cap generates 1 burrowed larva. Then both the burst and the burrowed should go to the 1st and 2nd from the queue. It is simply unfair that marines, apart from 5000 defibs, ALSO get to play Xenomorph as soon as they get capped.

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Maybe expand upon the lesser drone/facehugger idea?

So you at least have something to do while you’re in your hour long larva queue.

Reducing respawn time since death, maybe some buffs, etc. Maybe another T0 caste?

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It has to be a big mistake, mind you. Saying that one xeno mistake equals one marine mistake is just straight up lying. As a xeno you can make a mistake, get flamed, run away, ressist the fire then sit on weeds for a minute, or two and you are ready to fight again. As marine you can walk over hugger trap, get grabbed by runner and that is it.

I disagree that making xenos less ass to play is just giving them more respawns. Your average XX runner who dies by pouncing a marine next to another one with buckshot shotgun will hog all of your larvas anyway.

“Dying as xeno sucks ass so now I will be able to die two-three times in a round, this is better”.

Rework research, remove/disable it till it gets reworked, rework OT, remove/disable it till it gets reworked, don’t touch M10 etc, don’t just “revert” PRs willy nilly.

How to make xenos more fun? Remove some power from T3s (mainly rav), remove direct combat power from Queen, add that to other castes, mainly T1s. Here you go.
I really, really, really don’t think that just adding more respawns to xenos will make playing them more forgiving. And surerly adding bullshit OP stuff back that causes those unfair deaths against xenos to marines will help at all.

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Personally, i would rather just gut combat queens power and decentralize it amongs all other T3s bar rav. Rav right now is the only caste in a good spot, and nerfing it instead of making it the standard T3 seems to be the incorrect choice when you also nerf queen impact.

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I would remove the requirement of hive weeds in order to nest someone. If xenos want to be risky and nest someone in an area with no hive core and no cluster, who caressssss. It’ll lead to less frustration and less “oh I guess we have to perma this person resulting in less players in the round (due to no burst) because no hive weeds”

Capping in general has been nerfed so much over the years that it’s hard to convince new xeno players to try to cap (and do it successfully) instead of kill. If the capping process is more forgiving, then people won’t be waiting an hour in larva queue as much.

As for marine changes, I would unnerf B8 smartscope and other IFF options to let them shoot through people again. It used to work like that. I think it was cool as it lessened friendly-fire incidents.

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If it were up to me. I’d make lots of the xenos more monstrous.

The most terrifying thing about them is that they always seem to surprise humans.

I’m talking vent kills. Tougher grabs, and hell, make their acid blood a bit more potent, why not.

I want to feel like a monster, or like I’m fighting monsters. Not just an enemy faction.

Imagine being grabbed by a drone and pulled away while you’re fumbling with your gun to shoot it off of you. It’d be so peak.

Grabbed by a drone and you PB em, too easy.

But then private soldier got dragged into a vent behind you, pings are mounting, the squad lead is panicking and you’re about to call CAS on ypur position.

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respectfully, this is exactly what leads to us having a total lack of queens. we basically see the same 5 players queening over and over and over again. i get many queen rolls while having it on low priority. some of you forget the people behind queens are also players who want to have fun.

agreed, more often than not when playing queen, I repeat 5 times that we are only going to be SLASHING and not capping, because given how hard it actually is to cap (how they’ve nerfed xenoshoving of so many castes, tunneling while capping, and many others), it more often than not leads to zero reward while xenos die.

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Boo hoo. If current Queen players would leave playing Queen because you took their direct combat power then good riddance. Queen is supposed to be xeno CO equivalent, not a frontline fighter.
Nobody stops them from having fun, but if the only way for them of having fun is being the most powerfull player in the game in terms of direct combat, then sorry not sorry, apply for a pred, or something.

Queen should be commanding xenos, not something that wins, or loses games based purerly on abusing screech.
Maybe we would have more queen players if entire round wouldn’t be decided on the fact if they are robust, or not. Because right now if you suck at combat as a queen, xenos will bully you out of it. Entire game is balanced on Queen showing up and abusing screech, that is why all other castes (besides rav) suck ass, because they have to suck ass with Queen in the room for the game to be balanced. So many cries about weak xenos, yet game balance is about 50-50, curious. That is the reason there is so little Queen players, not because queen got nerfed. Queen should shit out eggs and command the hive, lore accurate, soul, so on and so forth.

Boo hoo. Have a hugger, or carrier nearby and capping is just as easy as slashing, if you can’t run back to the nearest hive weed spot in the time it takes marine to wake up from hugger nap then I have no words.

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you are being pretty explicitly mean over a thread that is purely for ideas & productive discussion, not argument, i’d ask you chill a little bit

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Okay, I will give my two cents of a player that has been playing mainly xeno for more than a decade.

I’ll ramble a lot, but it’s kinda how I see things after having to teach a few friends (and failing) to get them hooked on CM through steam! (Both on xeno and marine side.)

But this thread is for Xenos, so I’ll focus on them only.

Playing as Xeno.

Honestly.

Fucking sucks.

This is not to say that xeno isn’t always shit or always fun. But 99% of the time, you are fucking bored out of your ass or dead.

The only time that I have fun with Xeno is if I get T3. Why? Because you actually have round impact and you seem to be doing stuff. Of course there are small moments where you feel useful as a runner capping or pulling a funny as T2, but for the average player…

Playing as any kind of xeno sucks.

All the new people I taught to play the game, they all either stopped playing or preferred to play Marines. Why? Because as Xeno you have to land 353547 combos, know how marines play, how whole gameplay mechanics aren’t explained while being the faction that has to walk and melee the enemy…

And remember, if you misclick, if you did not check that the marine you are attacking wasn’t someone with a Strobia Clicker (this is a joke) and can insta PB the millisecond that you move next to them as a runner and pulls a M4 before you can even react to what the hell is happening and burst you down…

You are not not able to play for one hour due the queue. Or sometimes more. Sometimes less. Depends on the round and players. This utterly sucks and I don’t know how new players can even enjoy playing Xeno.

I do it out of inertia.

You don’t know how demoralizing it is to kill one marine as Xeno, only to see them get up, and up, and up, and revived every single time. That’s why we call em zombies after all.

You almost need a course on tackle dragging these days, they nerfed the whole tackling and dragging, usually if you do it for 10-20 seconds the marine will get up anyways. You have no tunnels. You have to devour them. Now teach this to a new runner/sentinel/drone player while being shot, with the chance of the marine getting up and PBing them in a nanosecond and them getting them round removed…

I think I have ranted enough, but let’s go to your points.

I think @Orleans made the best suggestions. So I won’t say much because I would keep repeating myself.

You also made the point that Xenos need more numbers. Which in a vacuum is fine, but by the games design, the Marines are the swarm faction.

Perhaps the idea of taking power away from the queen and making every T1 more meaningful could work.

These days, T1 are simple bullet sponges or distractions at most.

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Nobody seems to have grasped any of the important parts of why xeno sucks to play (as per usual) trying to fault new players or otherwise queens for some reason?

Queen is not the “support equivelant of CO” i dont know why people have this misconception, the queen is a frontline caste that leads the hive, not order it, there is a reason why its the “baddest and the strongest xeno” not because its a computer designed to give orders but lead in battle

im not even going to bother reading the rest of this thread because im sure theres some stupid shit about how xenos need to hit every ability or they die or something or some shit about how or some stupid about revival. (hey guys please show some basic signs of research and atleast know why this was removed.)

okay now i’ll tell everyone why we are here where we are :slight_smile:

Double burst larva - This was never a problem, yes realistically speaking every cap you will get will probably the people who have already died, speaking as from the viewpoint of a person who isnt going to die 5 minutes into the round barring expectations like lag or some ot rocket that you couldnt have predicted, most of the larva you get will be cycled through the same new players, this isnt really a big ordeal because realistically speaking at high pop there will always be “another cap” but the easiest way to solve this would be a stacking larva timer that punishes people who keep dying again and again.

Shoving applying less stun over time - This is a stupid change, theres no justification any sensible player who plays both sides with a modicum of skill plays can excuse, the entire point of being capped has always been its been harder to be in a place where you can get stunned by a shove (unless youre a giga noob who cant burst down a runner before it gets 4 shoves off i guess?) it has always been harder to get into the perma stun then (i have nerfed a lot of the bullshit ways to get insta-capped myself) to be given even more chances, the recent changes has made capping significantly more annoying and even more handholdy for marines. yes im sure some chud with 10 hours is about to write a paragraph about how its bs a xeno can shove you around for 30 meters, but i really dont care, theres a billion ways to prevent this from happening.

People seem to have forgotten that the marines are supposed to rush into the hive before the xenos become too many to handle, this is a game design that has been very apparent, and a lot of our newer players either are unable to comprehend this or just refuse to understand and cry baby, if people are cading caves and going afk, eventually they will get more then you and overwhelm you,yes this is intended, queen being a combat caste or not doesnt have anything to do with this.

Just remember, if you people want queen to be less combatty (removing screech, which is basically impossible in the immediate future) this would mean every single xeno would be buffed into sponges and even more “one shots” i ‘d rather fight a ravager i know i can kill in a 1v1 if i dont mess up then just not even try because i know its so tanky i’d run out of magazines before i could.

A majority of the reason xeno is unfun to play is isnt because xeno is “unfun or left to rot” its because marines by the day receive very siilly changes they really shouldnt (im saying this subjectively before any megachud calls me a one sider) marines didnt need the shove changes, realistically the stim nerfs are great but there’s still a lot of shit that needs to be touched like hpr damage, intel and comm placements, the basically semi infinite stock they get on req stuff, etc

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I’m gonna respond to you simply because I dislike leaving arguments unaddresed, however, the way you’ve written your response, in such a toxic manner that even the OP had to call you out, speaks loudly.

Yeah true, the most popular archetype of Marine CO isn’t the frontline fighter one… LMAO, starting strong here, even with the “boo hoo” :clown_face:

Most powerful player in game in terms of DIRECT combat? Tell me you haven’t ever played Queen without telling me you haven’t ever played Queen. Screeing for OTHER xenos to grab and slash is literally the opposite of DIRECT. It’s 100% indirect combat.

“Abusing screech”.I believe this sums your entire post up quite nicely. You want Queen nerfed because you’re a marine-only player constantly getting caught out of position and getting capped on screes because you believe playing recklessly should go unpunished.

Good summary by @eluxor on how playing xenos actually feels. But it’s fine, Xenos’ enjoyment will keep getting disregarded by the majority of the Marine playerbase (and marinedevs), and we will start seeing more situations like last evening, prime time on Sunday, with Xeno mains literally deciding to boycott a round on Tyrargo Rift. 100 players, 7 xenomorphs with 0 drones and no queen. Either the server’s mentality will change, or we will all go play PvE.

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I still wish the xenos could have a lesser drone boon and spawn in 30 of the fuckers I would join the xenotide every time

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Such CO gets his whitelist removed. Anyway CO on the frontlines is just SL+ and CO’s don’t deploy every single round. PFCs aren’t weak because CO is strong. T1/T2s are weak because Queen is strong. Want to make T1/T2 gameplay better? Buff them while nerfing queen.

Ah yes, argument about semantics. It is not like I meant Queen should be sitting in hive shitting eggs and her appearing on the frontlines is already in “direct” combat. You got your “GOTCHA” moment, Queen doesn’t slash marines herself.

Wrong, buck’o.

Your mystical orb has shown you warped projection of my mind. Queen screech is very strong, but T1’s, T2’s and certain T3’s suck ass which balances it out. Just about anyone with any grasp on CM reality should know that robust, or unrobust queen wins, or loses the game for xenos.
Queen’s screech is a major factor that keeps xeno gameplay sucking ass. Remove it and you can buff pretty much every xeno with the exception of rav and game would be balanced just about the same.

I might be toxic, but prove I am wrong.

Letting xenos respawn more won’t help xeno gameplay. It will suck just as it did before, but in that case they would die three times in a unfun way instead of once a round.

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if you can’t talk to each other about a 2d video game like reasonable adults, the thread should be locked.

also my two cents: the burden of skill is higher on xeno players on average, since the marine team is meant to swarm and mistakes are more easily fixed with medics. I think if you wanted xeno to feel more forgiving you should give xenos more support abilities to recover their allies mistakes, like valk prae. It won’t do anything for the suicide chargers or loners who are allergic to teamwork, but group fights might be more reasonable if you had more chances to survive by the skin of your teeth

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Cabal, do you think the round should still happen if no queen spawns?

Also gonna fourth that this thread could do with less grade school insults. I don’t care if you’re right or if you have good points if you express them like you hate everybody else involved.

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With how it is currently under no circumstance should round happen if Queen doesn’t appear in first few minutes after it started. This could be kind of mechanically solved by letting xenos do everything they could with present Queen (evo, tacmap, hivespeak) up to like 0:18 mark. But if after that Queen doesn’t appear, might as well call it marine major and restart. Queen is that important to xenos, which shouldn’t be the case.

I was always strongly opposing the idea of concentrating power on individuals because it leads to situations like we have now, or had in the past with tank. When tank rolled out with all of its LTB glory it was either VCs were robust and as PFC you could just deploy to maybe see a runner, or two before marine major happened, or VCs were bald and you could just deploy to be steamrolled, no in-between. SADAR robust, all T3s are fucked, SADAR bald, you might as well aim mouth and click yourself with gun if you see rav on your screen.

Nobody is insulting anyone, point those vicious insults we throw at each other. “Reasonable adult” isn’t an emotionless robot.

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the xcom bots are arguing

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You could have fooled me (I understand it’s your posting style but still)

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