I think the crux of what most people are saying, regarding marines getting rewards & making abominations easier is that people want Predators to be more integrated into the round, which I think is interesting. Previously, the main focus was to make them have the least impact on the round, but some of these changes about OWLF and whatnot will significantly impact the flow of the round.
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Would somewhat help to have a hard cap on predators per round regarding the abom stuff - yeah sure 2 might be manageable, but 6+ preds isn’t.
Though the only way to fix the “is it worth it” issue would be to remove gear recovery and abom hunting as a whole, which is less than ideal. Maybe at least force them to take a more direct/suicidal approach to prevent the back and forth harassing from going on for 30+ minutes?
Aside from that it’d be cool if SD required a short timed action to activate rather than being instant.
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Heya, this one is a bit out of our control but we’re still doing everything we can.
Our solution would be to add the OWLF, a direct counter to Yautjas whenever a predator body/gear is brought on the ship.
No, it’d be hard to find a balance on “slots” because pred rounds are already rare. There are times when it’s been 2-3 days before a pred round.
As above, we really want to add the OWLF but we’re at a standstill right now.
We’ve been thinking of ways to stop the “wave attack” tactic whenever a pred gets hugged, perhaps removing the ability to join as a predator until it bursts and then some more so it can its bearings.
Religious predators are included both in our lore and the lore of the movies (Shaman | Xenopedia | Fandom). A lore re-write is sadly medium priority to us right now due to the amount of issues we have (gameplay-wise, feature-wise)
It’s very easy to counter predators when you’re sticking with an abomination, as it’s “screech” quite literally dooms one.
When did this happen? Please send me the roundID and I’ll handle it right away.
The buff is a “bandaid” as we’re planning to nerf it the moment we find out a way to make normal and AP mags do the same damage to the predator.
It’s really not, I, yesterday as a warrior capped a predator alone. Many times before that I’ve done the same where I capture them with rarely any resistance.
Once more, we wish to add the OWLF for marines and hive-wide buffs for xenomorphs for killing predators.
That’s already a thing.
Extremely good point, I’d love for someone to add a “shimmer” and “malfunction” sound effects every time a predator is healing just like in the OG Predator movie. Healing as a predator should make you as vulnurable as it can be.
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So preds just kill xenos who aren’t anywhere near the abomination and are perfectly happy doing so whilst invisible under the pretence that it’s aiding the hunt of the abom. Even when all the xenos are in the vicinity of the abom (and assuming abom knows their abilties as well which might be better now theres a tutorial) the constant pred harassment inevitably delays finishing off marines. Every young xx defender that gets hpced or thwacked by an invisible pred could have been thrown into the FOB siege meatgrinder and every moment xenos have to waste fighting a morbillion of the Mujahideen’s finest suicide bombers is minute closer to marines getting stims. Point is round dynamic gets massively skewed from xenos vs marines vs preds to xenos vs marines + preds together all for a xeno caste which isn’t particularly good and which dies to preds if its by itself anyway.
Wouldn’t be a big deal if any of these was actually fun but it’s just not.
I didn’t note the round ID at the time I just remember Elizabeth was synth and it was on hybrisia, maybe it was 23168 but that’s a literal guess based on last round chat.
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Mask protects from huggers and gives xeno medhud iirc
Also the reward is the fun of having overcome a dangerous foe. They are optional to fight regardless.
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i think big sd should be removed. doesnt really serve a purpose other than the legacy honor requirement of killing the person who bested you in battle if possible to “protect honor”. small sd gets the job done, and all i see nowadays is preds baiting the hive to attack them on pre-hijack dropship and then big sding as they die.
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Yeah, big SD is just the ultimate “griefer” gadget. You put it on, fight some marines/xenoes, then SD, taking out all the baldies out of the round that don’t know how large that explosion is.
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Something that bothers me about preds is that people can’t seem to decide if they are antagonists that are supposed to kill you, or if they are an optional enemy that will only bother you if you bother them first.
In this thread alone (or even just the post 3 above me) you can see people refering to them as optional, but a recent whitelist report verdict calls them antagonists that can hunt who they please.
The thing is whenever someone complains about preds being too OP and/or unfun to fight, someone comes in to say “just don’t fight them then”. But whenever a pred kills someone without provocation the response is “yeah they’re antagonists, they’re supposed to kill you”
Which is it? If they are antagonists they need to be balanced like it. It’s not as bad if you are marine but if you are a xeno preds are utterly miserable to play against, especially 1v1. An enemy that can run super fast, turn invisible, is immune to traps and weed slow down, is extremely tanky to slashes, is stun resistant, and can HPC you is not really balanced if they are supposed to be an antagonist role that can hunt and kill you if they feel like it. Some prime warrior with 10000+ hours in the game is going to come in to tell me that actually it’s easy to 1v1 preds as xeno but for the average player that’s just not true.
Also yes, I am including HPC in my judgement of balance here, because preds can HPC people if they are dishonorable (which can be as simple as they attacked the pred first). Sure preds usually don’t HPC unnecessarily but usually is the key word there, they can still do it if they want to and they do not get punished for it. If HPC is not going to have strict restrictions then it needs to be balanced too, insta killing a runner with HPC because you find them annoying is just not fair or balanced for the runner player.
And before you act like that example has never happened, I literally DM’d a councillor about a pred I witnessed HPC a runner that attacked them 1v1 and they said it was justified because runners are a nuisance, so this is not some crazy hypothetical.
And I want to say this one last time for emphasis since this is my most important point: If preds are antagonists then they should be balanced like it. Even if they are a challenge they should at least be fun to fight and fair, and this includes from the xeno perspective, not just marines.
Edit:
I think you’re kind of out of touch with the average player then. Keep in mind preds can hunt T1s like defenders and sentinels. Do you think the average player stands a chance against a pred as a defender or sentinel if the pred decides to hunt them? The only hope they have is running towards other xenos and hopefully getting protected by a huge mob, but if you get ambushed while walking to the front/hive then that might not be an option. I can’t tell if your response here was an excuse for you to brag about your skill or if you genuinely think preds are weak vs xenos 1v1.
I am glad to hear there will be some kind of rebalance vs xenos soon though, hopefully that helps make it more fun.
Okay but then you’re putting marines at a disadvantage from an event that they had zero control over.
I think this is a big thing as well, whenever community members raise concerns about some pretty fundamental aspects of how preds operate you’ll often get 1 of 2 responses which are 1) get good/it’s your fault or 2) this actually never happens. Even in this thread it feels like a lot of the observations are being responded too with this actually isn’t the case.
The problem comes when we then expect the same players to essentially self regulate in good faith
Solely against predators.
Predators are antagonists who hunt whoever they please within the limits of the honor code. Self regulation is not a thing, everything that is reported comes upon review from the Whitelist Manager, the Maintainer, the Senator and the Council.
I killed 3 predators on my own as a warrior off weeds, I don’t see a problem and can’t relate.
They are weak, and they’ll be made weaker against xenos soon.
I’d rather see the whitelist die than remove big SD from the original movie.
Same as above.
Having an abomination is practically declaring a war on the hive between Yautja and the Prime Xenomorphs. If you don’t want one, just don’t cap one.
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Truthnuke: Big SD is not big enough.
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Not sure why people are complaining about Big SD being a griefer tool, if it was lore-accurate, it’d destroy the entire AO, create a crater in the middle of the explosion and kill all life around it, since its range is about 300 city blocks (Pulled from google)
TLDR; Be happy that they didn’t make a lore accurate big SD
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Big SD is soul and should never be removed, small SD being removed is fine.
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Then why is your response to all the feedback you asked for that you just don’t agree with it?? I’m very happy for you that you can kill a morbillion preds when you play warrior and can solo cap them so so easily but clearly a large part of the community aren’t at the level where they feel like it’s viable. I also am confident with fighting preds although I don’t go out of my way to bother nowdays because it’s such a chore. But I still think the viewpoint of players who feel mechanically unable to fight preds is valid and should be considered rather than this my experience is the only one attitude? Once again why ask for feedback??
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on the off chance someone ends up proposing something good
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predators are already weak enough to kill AND capture. stalkerino is half-blind by the way, and they still manage to frag. if a half-blind person can kill 3 preds alone - anyone can.
we don’t need to make captures easy. predaliens are supposed to be a rare thing that is hard to get and hard to maintain. the result of making capture of the pred easier than it already is will be extreme slime from both xenomorphs and predators
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Never remove big SD. It is pure soul. Embrace the suck.
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I’m not saying they’re not easy enough to kill/capture and its’ not something I have a massively strong opinon on, but I still think its’ important to consider why a lot of players might perceive things a certain way rather than just dismiss the feedback you asked for out of hand. Like maybe there’s a big skill gap issue or something and then you think about whether your balancing for the best players or for young xx drone whoever. Not saying that this is the case but don’t see why everytime someone has an opinion on preds that it all gets so defensive
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I think that small SD is lame, there, I said it.
Big SD is cool and actually warrants running away when u hear BEEP BEEP BEEP.
Predators who fail to big SD should be dragged back to the ship like ye olde days and shamed by being put in a tomb unless SD is the only way to stop people fucking with the body
edit: if needed increase the timer before exploding for cinematic escape
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im blind in real life and the entire game is a blur to me and i still manage with great ease, im sorry to say but i can not take “pred is op” seriously if it is just not true to me
i’ve already agreed to NERF predators against xenos by giving warriors and vampires higher healing to result in longer fights and a more level-sided fight so i dont see how exactly you’re saying that im ignoring everything
i’ve also agreed that OWLF (pred hard counter) should be added, i just seriously dont have the money to commission it as of yesterday so if you’re willing to pay up just message me on discord @stalkerino
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