It was understandable when it came to survivors, along with the mechanic that was implemented that already forced scouting larvas to run back to weeds in order to evolve, but it is just problematic and leads to egregious and questionable notes from staff who will see a larva simply outside the hive and believe they “could” be in danger which therefore is noteable. The circumstances in which a larva needs to be killed when they are outside the hive and NOT on/near the frontline is both extremely rare, and something that is almost never seen. Players who walk out of hive as a larva should not be immediately noted, and unless they actively seek out a fight from a threat outside the hive they are almost never in danger. The rule clarification basically needs to be clarified better.
This rule could also in place to give at least some reasonable time between becoming a mature xeno, and getting to the front. After all, it takes marines time from waking up to the point of getting to the LZ. Otherwise the larva could simply run to a relative safe spot near the front and wait to mature and have at it.
It’s not that hard to just stay in the hive, it stops admins having to decide whether or not there is intentional griefing involved by those who try to get themselves killed “by mistake”.
And of course the RP lore reasons for why a larva would stay in the hive.
I think this rule should come in effect if you die as a larva not when your scouting. However it should also be in effect before first drop to give survivors a chance or before survivors are found.
Yeah this is what would be best, how it is enforced right now feels more akin to rule lawyering and straight up unnecessary staff involvement especially when it’s clear they were not in any danger as well as the fact that they didn’t die and were relatively safe in all regards.
One of the other managers wrote it when I was trying to actively discuss something that made sense and was reasonable 
Yeah this rule clarification is really just going to get a lot of people noted. Some people might not even see it and it’s a common occurrence for some larva’s to leave the hive when there’s for example, a fob siege or during hijack. It’s just unnecessary
Ok im gonna be very real here, im a survivor main and have played more than 200, probably 300 survivor rounds.
While I do think larva rushing is a cheese tactic, I and many others have no problem with it. Nobody wants to have to ovi as a drone or defender and spend 10 minutes searching the map for survs, its completely understandable that a larvae might get a split view of the survivors before going back to weeds to evo and to fight the survs. You only get so much time (25 minutes most of the time) to actually engage survivors, and imagine if you had to stay in the hive for two minutes as a larvae, evo to drone or wait for your desired cast (wait another several for runner or defender) and by that time you have a whopping 15 minutes or so.
I agree with @Usnpeepoo , this will get a lot of people noted and for no good reason either. Its such a minor thing and most people do this responsibly and do not end up griefing or losing larvae slots and usually their intentions are to never frontline with the larvae.
I dont think the rule clarification is nescescary, I think that noting someone for this behaviour should only be warranted when they are very explicitly frontlining or being reckless, as I do think the rule ‘clarification’ is way too broad. The rule clarification I think should be for recklessness rather than leaving the hive as larvae. You took the risk of leaving the hive, and if you die as a result of it you should be noted for it (of course provided you were actually being reckless) because I dont think this is fair to the players who will now have to wait what like 5 minutes to do whatever they want, then spend another 5 finding survs
I don’t believe larva should be the recon caste. If you’re a larva, and bee line it to sec dome, that should be noteworthy, but if you’re a larvae and just walk out of the hive for two seconds, you’re good. Using larva as recon for survs is a great way to get yourself killed and lose the hive a larva (bad)
This rule should only come into play when:
Aliens don’t “know” the danger in the map yet (As there are survivors that are armed and larvae are in most danger
Give it about 30-40 minutes and this usually is resolved)
Or
The larvae, without a doubt, intentionally throws their larvae without a care for any type of safety (If a larvae has not grown anywhere near the front line and is on the front line)
Larvae definitely should not be recon type either. Larvae should be going a safe place away from the front line to evolve into a more combat ready class. (They are a hivemind after all, they know about the whole evolving thing and how larvae is just stage 1 at it
So I’d say larvae:
May not be (reasonably) outside of the hive before around 30-40 minutes has elapsed
May not be DIRECTLY on the front line before evolving (may be a safe distance away)
May not intentionally divert path away from the line in order to avoid the intentional of risking self in order to “find new hosts” while in an incredibly weak state. (AKA Recon playstyle.) So larvae must find the most direct and safe path to a safe place decently far enough away to the line
Anything more than that and we play to Rule Lawyering again
I main support roles on the ship so I 100% might be talking out my ass, but I absolutely agree with you because I read that staff report. In the report, I believe it was you that stated an admin was ghosted and "noted you for being outside hive despite being 30 ticks from evolve and knowing the path was clear. What I still want instead is the larvae still having restrictions to allow survivors extra time and mitigate dumb ways for larvae to die by finding the other end of a barrel
I think a big factor in this is IO parties. IO parties can wreck a larvae’s day given some conditions are met
Heya! So I think I can give a bit of a different perspective of this.
I’ve handled quite a lot of ahelps from folks that are either from people saying that a larva is front lining or someone calling out that a larva died somewhere for some reason. 9/10 times when I investigate that stuff its a case of the larva in question thinking somewhere is safe but being wrong because of one reason or another.
Most common is people misjudging where the frontline actually is since sometimes its a bit mobile and what was a safe spot when they observed other xenos just as they spawned in is now no longer safe.
Some other stuff that happens a lot is larva’s dying to an unnoticed flank, IOs backlining for intel, meeting hive divers that are en route to the hive somewhere, scout surprising them with either a long range snipe or smack to the face with a machete, stray CAS or even a stray bullet from fighting somewhere else. Basically there are A LOT of ways to die as larva when you think that you are actually in a safe spot.
Its also one of the more ahelped rulebreaks since people get frustrated by it, and let me explain that.
Xenos are in pretty limited supply and capturing can be hard/dangerous so xenos will feel a bit miffed if they just spent a lot of effort trying to capture some marines only to see the larva’s gained by those captures die in a corner of the map since they weren’t paying enough attention.
People who observe also ahelp it a lot since usually when you’re well into a round there won’t be any burrowed larva left, and it gets very frustrating if you see other people take a role that you wanted to take and basically throw it away by dying somewhere.
I think its also relevant to say that in my experience the assumption in this quote isn’t the case:
This isn’t me going off hard numbers but I can pretty confidently say that on average we get like at least a few larva’s dying either on the front or somewhere in the backline every other round. Its why we try to be proactive with it if we see it, to prevent that from happening in the first place as much as possible. (So if we didn’t take action pre-emptively the number would probably be higher.)
Anyways while I get the sentiment of wanting to maybe make the rule a bit less harsh by saying “Only note if someone actually dies.” or something similar that does make the rule a bit unfair in my eyes.
It would basically mean that if you’re unlucky/unskilled enough to die you’d have OOC action taken against you. And that would make it a bit unfair for people who are worse at the game amongst other concerns I’d have with a rule like that. (New players getting noted for imitating behaviour that experienced players aren’t getting noted for, stuff like lag spikes making the difference between getting noted or not (extremely frustrating), the note being based on luck and the behaviour of other players (the ones killing you) instead of your behaviour, etc.)
Anyways I would probably agree with you on some things if the time to evolve as larva wasn’t so extremely short. IIRC its only 60 evolution points so it takes about a minute to evolve into a T1.
I know that its also faster to move around as a larva since you have a high speed and don’t need to open doors but that is again a minimal amount of time saved, and in most rounds there will be a tunnel in the hive that you can use to get wherever you need anyways.
So yeah in my eyes its such a short amount of time to not really be relevant, just grab a glass of water while sitting in the hive waiting for evo points and when you come back you can already evolve.
I think @Clairion has a great point in say
It would be pretty unfair if you were on the recieving end of the rule, basically getting noted because you died when you werent expecting to such as:
- looking at a surv for one tile, somehow gets shot and dies instantly (happened at least twice)
- Or getting hit by stray bullets, which has happened to me once as larvae, but I did not die.
The rule would be very luck or mechanically based and I think that given the fact that it only takes 1 minute and that the rule needs to be clarified upon that I dont think its unreasonable to be asked to stay in the hive for 1 minute to be evo’ing.
Personally, if both sides were an option for me I would go for the one where the rule didnt have to exist to begin with unless a player was acting highly recklessly, but its not possible to tell after some point wether someone was being wreckless or not and new player might imitate some behaviour of skilled players or get hit unluckily by a stray bullet, not be in the hive and look as if you were being reckless or have it not possible to be determined nad have it as a sort of a greyspot.
Like they mentioned, its better to have a proacitve rule rather than a ‘grey’ rule in a sense so I dont think being required to stay in hive for a minute, evoing and then leaving is harsh on players given the current predicament.
Fully remove the rule. This is just a way to rule lawyer against people. This was a non issue that was made an issue for no apparent reason.
Im speaking as someone who moderated CM for months and had almost 8-10h+ nonstop moderating almost everyday. Larva deaths were very rare(still is now! - I play more xeno often than marine) even before the dev update of making them unable to evolve offweeds.
I dont even know why this rule policy exist.
This is how we handled this back then.
- You die as larva. Moderator jumps in your location.
2a. If the moderator sees that you died deep in enemy lines from a chestburst = its fine (Mods see this because you die as “bloody larva”)
2b. If you died for any reason as a larva(except 2a) = you get noted
Another Scenario
- Xeno player Ahelps you being in the actual frontlines as a larva
- Moderator jumps and sees you doing idiotic shit
- You get noted
Thats literally it. Thats how it used to work back then.
Just bring back the old rule.
If you die as a larva = you get noted.
You get seen in the frontline as larva = you get noted.
No complicated and extra work for moderation.
@thesoldier if this was an actual issue back then we would’ve already raised it to you. This just became an issue by the time this policy was added. Not to mention players being able to ahelp other players made this very cancerous since some people want to play wannabee moderator.
Honestly I would rather the rule just be don’t suicide as a larva to intentionally ruin game balance and that sneaking aboard DS or anything else is fair game. And even if you die as a larva you died.
But the other powers to be have decided otherwise