Endgame Reworks

General Discussion
1

I feel like endgames could be tweaked to better satisfy people, since I’ve heard everyone on both sides complaining about the endgame mechanics of the other side.
Every roundend chat is spammed with “slop”, and most rounds just don’t really feel as fun or satisfying as they used to and I think this might be a good place to start trying to rectify that.

Just my personal opinions on how it could be improved:

  1. Move roundend mechanics back by an hour.
    This would make rounds a bit longer, like they used to be. It would also ensure endgame mechanics are used to break stalemates, and I don’t think it’s a proper stalemate till about this time in the round. 2 hours is premature imo.
    This way people won’t just play for the endgame. I’ve seen too many rounds where marines sit in colony for literally 2 hours and refuse to fight or play the game in lieu of getting a nuke (LV is especially bad for this). It’s unengaging for either side, delaying the time it takes might discourage people from just landing and instantly deciding “hmm yes time to nuke this colony, we won’t even try to do anything less severe first.”

  2. Remove xeno endgame and alter marine endgame.
    People really don’t seem to like the king, so maybe remove it. Almost every time xenos have ever bought a king (except last night, a very based CIC ordered groundside hold on new var (runners began capping marines and bringing them to the king to be sacrificially executed by gibbing :Dread:)) marines don’t even bother trying to stop it, they just evac. And then the round doesn’t end, it just goes to hijack where they can still win. You still have to slog it out for another half hour at times. Xenos don’t get a “second chance” equivalent to hijack when marines use their endgame.
    King and Nuke aren’t really on equal footing. You directly fight the king at least. As much as I’ve seen people complain about King, I think an actual nuke equivalent would be the AA boiler, where it just sits on the other side of the map behind a billion fortifications and you just lose no matter how much you suicide push. It’s unengaging, unfun and extremely frustrating. This is what it feels like trying to play against a nuke presently.

SO

It is an asymmetrical game; with the present marine endgame I’m very thankful xenos have something they can endgame with, as opposed to pre-king when the meta was marines would do nothing and get rewarded for it for months on end.
However, being an asymmetrical game, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing the xeno endgame removed in lieu of the marine endgame being heavily altered:

ICly why does a USCM thermonuclear warhead need some backwater colony’s communication relays to be decrypted? And it’s on a fuckin missile, why not just fire it from orbit?

Right now nuke needs two comm towers to be “decrypted”. This is supposed to be an excuse for xenos to have time to stop it. In reality however, this doesn’t usually work, even if you do everything right. Relays are usually both on the marine-favored side of the map. You can take a relay, but they’ll just OB it. Then it’s flat ground, and xenos can’t hold. And unlike king, the timer doesn’t reset, it just immediately resumes the countdown again when they fix the tower.

  • So get rid of the comm towers. If marines buy a nuke, maybe the CO or a high ranking CIC staff needs to come down with it and use a tablet to activate it or something. And they need to come down as opposed to just firing it from orbit and calling it a day because:
  • The nuke needs to be detonated within the caves. People go underground to shelter from shit like this, you shouldn’t just be able to slap it down in the FOB and call it a day.
    But who the fuck cares about IC, it’s not like we’re a roleplay server right? :HAH:

So here’s an OOC/meta reason:

  • This change might sound extreme, but I don’t think it will have a negative impact. The only times I have ever seen a nuke work are when marines could have won without it. When they are disproportionately outnumbering xenos, have godstims, and could easily wipe with a push; they end up nuking the entire colony to kill Young XX sentinel and a facehugger (unironically I have seen empty colonies get nuked AFTER they win, truly in the human spirit of blowing shit up for no reason).
    At least a push would be engaging and fun for both sides. If marines have the ability to get a nuke off, they are more than capable of pushing. This would lead to marines superimposing their endgame on xeno territory. They arm it deep in the caves and have to either haul ass back to the LZ, or die with it in a last stand, going out with a bang (or maybe we could create a cool 3rd option where a CAS dropship can pick people up anywhere in the colony like a Vietnam chopper?).

Either way a nuke should be an absolute desperate measure last resort, and should feel like that when I play. It should be high nerves and stakes, not “sit behind 15 cadelines and jerk off for 20 minutes and not even get to see a cool explosion or anything”. I’d rather die screaming in a pool of my own blood singing “what a helluva way to die” on top of a pile of xeno corpses deep in the caves of some dirtwater planet before being eviscerated by hellfire with all my comrades, but that’s just me idk.

Also it would give xenos a chance to actually fight marines in open combat and go out in a last hurrah. I guess bumrushing the LZ would still be an option, so that wouldn’t change much from current nuke. Having the option to go out with a bang as opposed to banging heads on cades would be nice, but who cares about the xenomains amirite

I know people say “this is the best we’ve had,” but why do so many people seem frustrated/disappointed by current roundstates and roundflow? People on both sides seem to hate the current roundend mechanics, so maybe altering them wouldn’t be the worst thing.

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2

I just personally dislike that marines get several ways to end the game (Stims, Greenos, and Nuke), while xenoes get one. And the only one xenoes can somewhat interact with is the nuke, while greenos and stims can either happen by complete RNG, or just over time. This gives a lot of players a scewed opinion on marines, since they are supposed to be losing over time due to attrition, but then they get some massive buffs over time by just holding out while xenoes litterary get nothing unless you FOB siege.

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3

end game content is a bandaid solution for the poor game design around constant stalemates and never-ending sieges. personally, i dont think they should be needed

also, comms seriously need re-mapped. Theres no reason comms should be just as impossible(if not harder from kutjevo lz2 comms) to siege because of how close they are to lz.

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4

1: I don’t see this happening. The end round mechanics are already set to start when we are wanting the round to wrap up. A long round can be okay if you’re alive, but if say you only play marine and have been perma early on in the round, they just want the round to end as quickly as possible.

2: Discussed in many other places, but xenos end out a round with hijack. I have no intentions to skip it. Though food for thought if you haven’t already seen it, I intend to mix up hijack somewhat with FTL Hijack Objectives - HackMD though ultimately its not a big change. It’s primarily a flavor change, but can also mix up command’s strategy for hijack.

I am also almost certain that if xenos could just skip hijack your complaint about marines only ever evacing when a King is spawned will be exacerbated and the player who gets selected for King will never have anyone to fight.

It is intentional that King is not a substitute to the nuke, it is an asymmetrical game and I would like to lean in to that as much as possible to make playing one side or the other play and feel unique.

Marine nuke is intended to force xenos to put all of their effort into engaging the fob. If they can never succeed, then they likely need more siege power. However, for the most part whichever side that managed to get their endgame mechanic should have the advantage.

King is intended to be a strong fob breaker. When growing, it is like the marine nuke encouraging marines to engage a coms tower to stop it (either tower lost will kill the egg). But when grown it should be able to force evac finally.

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5

Roundend mechanics already feel like they happen way too late, some rounds stagnate so hard they deserve to end long before current timers.
Admittedly it’s almost entirely the fob sieging that drags so hard, there should be more importance on relay controls to at least encourage/force skirmishing instead of cadehuggium with bipods (delete the attachment, cursed item as fun as it is to use). Marine defensive play is mind numbingly boring whether you obs or play either side as no real player interaction happens.

No real issue with anything else imo, save for the actual balance of endgame (cryorines bad cuz used when marines forced to fob thus extending game, xeno 5 armor laughably useless etc).

When it comes to hijack it feels like it’s too easy for people to opt out of the round, too much like cryoing.

Would be great if evac pods weren’t launchable at all until some requirement is fulfilled (manually inserting a fuel container [by hand or powerloader?] that initiates a launch timer? [stops working when power’s cut?] Manual launch override for each pod located somewhere [nearby? downstairs?] that fires them prematurely through some wrench/crowbar interactions?).

I think that’s the biggest issue, the opt out option being just there rather than something you earn, the hijack doesn’t really feel personal, getting the civilians out should be a cool story of its own - the synth or some random marine managing to launch your pod just before xenos pry open the door woulda been pretty hype.
Also might be of note to req rework Draft: Cargo Tug update! Combat CT edition (!2210) · Merge requests · CM Devs / CM13 · GitLab was a pretty fleshed out idea that gave both CTs and fobbits work

7

I would respectfully disagree that the current CM meta is the best CM has ever been. It is ok, but I think the meta immediately preceding the nuke readd was measurably more enjoyable.

If someone asks me what a proper CM meta should be, one key principle is:
A. In the first hour of the round, xenos should not be strong enough to brute force through the entire marine force or even assault the FOB.

Marines just like xenos want to win the round and:
B. As long as the nuke is a marine victory strategy, marines are going to play for it.

But, since there’s nothing in the game design that forces marines to even leave the FOB apart from the command and the unga gene:
C. Marines are going to play for the nuke(B) and drag the rounds out, while the xenos are too weak to stop them(A).

There were many suggestions how to correct for this problem. The original xeno endgame was a hack originally suggested by yours truly, but it was admittedly too strong in the end. Elsewhere I suggested that xenos should still be getting a small free larva drop one hour in…

Your solution unfortunately seems to be too much of a hassle for what it is - would require all maps to get those nuke spots and this seems a bit too xeno biased. But, I see where you’re coming from.

Now, I also have another suggestion. What if we make B false? What if the nuke was a true wildcard round ender, that would always have as unpredictable a result as possible? Here’s the idea:

  • At 2 hours in and every 30 minutes after that marine command can fax the high command for a nuke.
  • Faxing for a nuke starts a vote that requires 60% of surviving players on both factions counted independently to vote yes.
  • If yes wins marines get the nuke that they can just blow up in the FOB in X minutes.
  • Xenos get an evo boost and as many larva to repopulate the hive in relation to the surviving number of the marines at the ratio of 1 to Y.
  • Maybe xenos get the King too.
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8

Shift away from ending the game by wiping the entire enemy team and instead towards accomplishing goals/objectives.

 
 

Different maps can have different fundamental goals, which keeps the gameplay more fresh.

The problem is people are trying to make different ways to accomplish the exact same thing. It’s always going to feel the same. Whereas “prevent civilian rocket from taking off” and “extract an important VIP and his intelligence data” are two completely different goals that will never play the same.

Such goals don’t even necessarily have to be round-enders but contributory. You could have a list of objectives at the end of a round and who accomplished what important things contributing towards either a success or failure for that side.

Fundamentally this would shift the game away from pure team deathmatch too. Also gives you more to think about than “beeline hive/LZ”

1 Like
9

what if there was a certain area, or small number of areas, in “neutral territory” where no hive structures could be built within, that marines have to plant the nuke for it to work? maybe could have it be a volatile fuel silo that passively toxifies resin structures adjacient to it to explain why they cant’ be built, firing the nuke outside of these areas is possible, but will only kill creatures outside of the caves, so xenos can retreat instead and be okay, but on the backfoot if you can redeploy marines fast enough

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Then we will have to re-introduce cloning or make marines able to quite literally shit out foxtrot, because alot of marine players dont actually play xenos at all, and so if they die early - you have people with nothing left to do except hope Foxtrot appears or they just go afk and wait for another round. Both would change the balance drastically, making marines prioritize unga tactics of wave assault more, because life becomes more and more worthless.

Here I have to agree, I personally hate metaevacs. While simple(and best) solution is removing hijack, some people really dont want to see it gone, thus I think xenos should be rewarded King when marines evacuate with 40+ marines planetside, to prevent metagaming and punish ‘bad’ CIC. The faster Hijack ends - the better.
Otherwise, while I was starting out my XOing when King was added - I demanded marines push for King and usually managed to turn around the game, when xenos inevitably overextended and killed themselves over a comms array. King is a good tool for xenos to kill cowardly marines and for brave marines to kill overzealous hives. If marines dont have the numbers to even assault king - they should just evacuate upon seeing the notification about him, unless CIC really thinks the FOB will stand.

Nuke can be easily disabled, if xenos have enough numbers. There’s been alot of tactics on how to stop nukes among Queens, I seen some and used a few, but unless the map is something like Ice Classic - nuke can be disabled. If xenos cant even take a comms tower - the hive heavily misplayed and should probably accept it’s fate. I personally sometimes managed to pull around a hive from 2 xenos, being me and the queen, because marines didnt wanna nuke and were not smart enough to use tactics against us. Biggest thing I think should be that nuke is punishable ICly more, and the CL gets more tools to stop nuke from occuring RP-wise(if the facility even under WY, anyways). If you use nuke - you are actively endangering your character’s career, because its probably not very nice to nuke a facility that was important, especially if its like 5 xenos left. You need Good Grounds to make an executive decision to nuke the colony, which is what natural stalemate is.

All in all, this is too much ranting, so I will just say: There’s counterplays, if one side doesnt use them its a skill issue. Colonial Marines is already a very heavily marine-sided game, its a miracle xenos even win when most of the rounds there’s ZERO boilers, and queen is not pulling some crazy flank.

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But would you be open to changing the objective of the nuke? You are right, it does force xenos to engage the FOB, but I’m saying that the very mechanic of forcing xenos to siege is extremely unengaging from a gameplay perspective, for both sides.

I do agree the game is asymmetrical, which is why I said I wouldn’t mind the asymmetry of xenos not having an endgame at all if the marine endgame was rebalanced to be more accommodating/engaging for both sides.
As it stands the King feels like an attempt at symmetry to the nuke, acting as the xeno equivalent of an endgame. But again the true equivalent would be an AA boiler, and I’m not advocating for that either, cause it’s equally as unfun to fight as the nuke.

Presently:
Marine endgame: xenos have to siege the fob
Xeno endgame: xenos have to siege the fob

I want to find a way to shift from slop sieges and try to encourage open skirmishing/battle regardless of endgame, since I think that’s more enjoyable for both sides.

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12

The rounds feel stale for a very, very good reason.

Both sides have been neutered but in different ways by the developers over the years, that is why the marines FOB siege, and xenos cave hug.

Xenos have been neutered as they do significantly less permanent damage in this current era of CM than they ever did. Xenos used to be able to delimb reliably, decap through helmet, double hugger cap alone without having to depend on 3-4 other xenos to help, disarm chance was higher so going alone was SUICIDE unless you were a robusto that could juggle buckshot and chase, the list goes on.

All of those are gone but in return marines lost a LOT of their good perks. Double buckshot juggle, buckshot AP, stronger OB’s, more OB’s in general, requisitions nerfed heavily, engineering nerfed (table forts, electric grilles, 2 step normal wall removal, stronger r-walls, more metal and effectiveness of said metal just in general CT vendors alone), etc.

Queen has also been nerfed but its strongest kit remains; screech and neuro, making it a beast to fight if your fighting an Elder Empress or higher that knows what the fuck they are doing. You can feel it in the round when a Queen that knows what they are doing de-ovi’s; it becomes a massive fall back to FOB rather quickly.

What needs to happen for rounds to stop being slop are several steps but developers have told me that it will not happen as they fear it will extend the round. Extending the round isn’t the issue, the issue is that there is very little ways to get back into the game that are reliable for either side, THAT is why endgame is being discussed so heavily. Endgame used to be a issue way back then too for the same reason; marines had little to no way to get back into the round if you got double hugger capped, decapped, delimbed on crucial limbs like hands so you can’t even fight, etc.

Xenos have similar complaints; cap gameplay is atrocious in the current CM loop where the only reliable ways to truly cap a marine is warrior juggle into prae, or Queen neuro then screech and drag when marines push to reclaim fallen. You only get a single larvae instead of a double burst as well like it used to be, so if you lose even a SINGLE xeno to cap a marine, its a net loss since you just wasted your time from the front and effort and risk to cap.

Xenos need to be able to passively gain larvae over time through gameplay mechanics such as holding comms (and not just a single surge and call it a day) alongside getting passive larvae the more and longer the Queen stays on Ovi (to encourage more ovi gaming over combat queen), while marines need a way to passively gain logistics either through the old ASRS Req Buff that gave Cargo Tech’s a random assortment of supplies every 5 minutes with increasingly better supplies as the round went on, OR make it so you get req budget for holding certain objectives such as comms, not just through an IO req boost that isn’t really that good because you lose so much money re-buying goods as Req.

This way, marines can still lose overtime if they FOB hug, but they also now have the logistics to push out as CT’s can get lots of metal needed to cade off flanks so you do not just die to a single good zerker queen or boiler queen combo flank that wipes entire front in 5 mins flat.

Otherwise this stale meta of FOB sieging and Xeno cave hugging to get caps will continue, ESPECIALLY on bigger maps like Hybrisa, Dam, etc.

TL;DR both sides logistics got neutered and thats why the most logical win condition for both sides is engaging in a camping fest.

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13

when can we stop basing things on the enjoyment of dead people. if you died, get good. if you died to something completely out of your hand, then we fix said thing.

otherwise, dead people should be ignored, they can go play a different video game for two hours

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14

I mean I suggested we find ways to get people back into the game

but People weren’t fans of that idea

So at first what Butlerblock was saying sounded kinda callous, but lowkey people are already waiting 2 hours to respawn as it is (especially xenos).

I don’t think making rounds shorter is the way to fix this cause it still takes like an hour between rounds to get to actual combat. So maybe we should stop balancing around ghosts, idk…

The issue with that is there’s a LOT of broken shit that can kill you out of your hands (SADAR, scout, queen, etc etc) so trying to make sure people don’t die unfairly would almost never happen.

I still think giving people more chances to respawn (easier medical system, regrowing limbs, groundside surgery, foxtrot, MORE LARVA, etc.) would be the best way to keep people in the game. Better than just nerfing everything into the ground and then making rounds slop bumrushes to the finish line. No more soul these days

15

Respawns aren’t the only issue, its ability for either side to push.

Marines can’t push without cades due to accumulated injuries and needing a place to defib in peace, xenos cannot push because in open ground they get shredded in seconds by rifles. And taking the risk of fighting in open ground would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that xeno capping is ass so you realistically will not get a respawn as a xeno, meanwhile a marine can get defibbed 5 + times in a row in one game and still keep fighting.

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Sometimes i wonder if we could just revert to an older version of cm… few years ago was peak. HPR, APC, ravager delimbs, high capacity dropship… oh what could have been… how did it go so wrong

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17

I forgot to mention the removal of the marine’s delay mechanics that let them actually stand a chance against a good hive that knows what they are doing.

I don’t mean Engineering since ive talked about that already, I mean things like Tank, APC, etc. These kind of features that made xenos fear a committed push unless they wanted to risk it is what kept marines alive enough to get defibs off and give them time to resupply.

Xenos have gotten some new delay mechanics like cluster added overtime but some got removed like Charger queen, but in that respect the xenos are fine honestly. But the delay mechanics removal from Marines has forced FOB sieges round after round since marines cannot leave cades since its a all or nothing nowadays, which further contributes to the stagnation of the game.

18

Can we just remove all defensive play buffs from the game in one patch and save CM? Remote building, cluster reinforced weeds, 99999 morbillion cadelines, omni and other specialized sentries, bipod DPS insanity. Offensive play is the only thing that was neutered over the years, trying to avoid the occassional blitz round that way just backfired into this.

Marine req has only been buffed overtime, the amount of metal in play is 3x if not more what they used to have.

At the very least the lategame should be around offense, not defense. It can’t be done via marine req since people will just flood the map with barricades and the round will not move anywhere.

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19

I honestly prefer long rounds. It leads to more RP. I do not like the focus on more TDM aspects. But I can understand from a Xeno perspective it is a lot more TDM and striking the right balance is hard.

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I mean I’m a xeno main and I also enjoy long rounds, cause there isn’t nearly as much RP for xenos (except maybe with greenos, but those require long rounds too usually), just combat.

But rounds are 30 mins for drop, XXmins combat, 30 mins for hijack, 10 mins for round reboot. Longer rounds mean more time for combat as opposed to waiting for combat. More time to evo to t3 so you don’t only get to play it off roundstart roles, etc.

I just wish things were like before where you wouldn’t wait a literal hour when you die to play again. Shorter rounds don’t amend this, usually now you are reborn as a xeno just in time for hijack, which is basically meaningless.
The round ends faster, but the net amount of time you spend waiting between round restarts for combat is actually worse with shorter rounds.

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21

Xenos are hyper lethal in melee, a few slashes have a decent change to delimb someone, fractures are guaranteed
All Xenos are able to 2 tap-stun any human who is more than 5 tiles from any other human, these humans will have a unique hud icon to show they are vulnerable
Marines die instantly to friendly fire
Xenos die very quickly to sustained gunfire outside of certain T3s/Queen and Fortified Defenders
The queen loses her screech or its nerfed. Give her something else for being off-ovi such as super pheros
All xenomorphs get three free respawns on dying before they use larva, plus a free evo straight to tier 2.

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