I agree with the screech comments. I can’t begin to say the number of times I’ve been caught on the edge of a screech and been instantly taken out of the round, as a zero-skill cap.
Furthermore, having played Queen, I’ve never felt like screech was a fair ability, and was easily able to get more than a dozen caps in cave just by using it and neuro.
…however, I do echo the sentiments of some other messages here. Xenos will struggle heavily without it.
I think I’d have tried making screech directional as a first step, but I agree with where it’s going: You need counterplay, and screech is explicitly anti-counterplay; borderline an “I Win” button detrimental to balance.
This single ability has dominated the balance of the entire game, causing everything to revolve around its existence, which then reinforced the need to keep it around and exacerbated problems elsewhere. Remove it and you finally start seeing the true nature of xeno gameplay - the actual pitfalls and balance issues which players could opine about for hours; problems that screech just kind of plasters over.
In essence: Screech was a crutch with a bad impact on both factions for different reasons. I am very happy to see this finally getting tackled.
Now this bombard ability - does not sound to me at first glance like it’s actually making the situation better, nor does it even aesthetically fit the lore or faction (but the game’s been slowly turning into USCM vs Tyranids for awhile now, so whatever I guess), however I’ll wait to say more once I’ve actually been able to play with it.
I mean, you are including me in that group of people of why this should be in acid goop due to average iq and reading comprehension so i am pretty sure that insults me.
Nothing will change in queen gameplay? In my oponion it will force queen to mostly sit on ovi due to weak combat power (lets be honest, neuro is only good if you fight with slower dudes or when they dont see you).
Is screech really that overpowered? How are marines able to win if it is?
It’s necessary to make sure this can even be tested in case FOBs become umbreachable, at least until something is done about it further down the line if this issue arises.
I think if current implementation has issues it’d be fine if coded to fire from the acid structures, at the very least would fit as much as the structures do (they dont).
You’re not forced onto ovi much like you’re not forced to de-ovi now. Screech will just less impact than it does now, it’s not like its being removed entirely.
queen or hive making mistakes, obviously. lol
Marines are able to win because the entire game has literally been balanced around the screech being so powerful for a decade.
If Team 1 has a disproportionately OP ability, how do you make sure the winrate between Team 1 & Team 2 stays at 50%? It’s simple. Nerf the absolute shit out of the rest of Team 1’s abilities to compensate for that ability, or buff Team 2.
Team 2 being able to win against Team 1 does NOT mean the ability ISN’T disproportionately powerful.
Just because something has been in the game for so long doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good. It only sounds normal to us because we’ve been playing with it for years.
Show the screech ability to an outsider and they’ll be amazed at how terribly designed it is. If I was playing a TDM game and someone can stunlock my entire team for a solid 4 seconds, enough time for anyone on the enemy team to kill me or my teammates without any counterplay- I’d probably be bewildered it was even in the game, before rioting at the game development studio.
Nonetheless, I believe Queen mobility or survivability should go up so she’s less susceptible to marine counterpushes. The slowdown certainly helps, but I don’t know if it’s enough. I think the Queen being harder to kill is a good exchange for the Queen’s combat power going down.
bro SADAR is literally the protagonist. The whole game revolves around whether sadar can instantly take queen out of the match with one click or not. If that doesn’t decide the outcome of matches idk what does.
At least queen screech doesn’t instakill everyone that gets affected by it. And sure, you can argue sadar only takes out one xeno at a time as opposed to maybe half a dozen marines on average affected by a scree, but the game is asymmetrical. One T3 getting killed in 1 click is way more detrimental than even a dozen marines getting screeched and stunned for a few seconds
literally any games like CM with oppossing factions resolves around players making mistakes and the opposite team making use of it, and vice versa, i don’t see how this is a problem
“The only reason xenoes aren’t perma winning is because xenoes bad” is a hell of an argument to remove screech. But I guess if xenoes always play perfectly, then they will win 100% of the time.
and if marines play perfectly they win 100% of the time
Players making mistakes isn’t a problem, having an incredibly OP unfun ability is. Dunno where u got the idea that I think mistakes are somehow a problem.
it isn’t an argument to remove screech. Follow the conversation.
I think everything relevant was said either here or on github already anyways. As funny as inability to read is I ain’t into dark humor.
Sorry, its just a qoute where you say that the only reason xenoes lose is because they make mistakes, BECAUSE of screech. Like, thats such a redundant thing to say its actually laughable. And nerfing screech by 50% or so is supposed to fix the problem of “Xenoes only lose because of screech”. Hell, just say “The only reason marines lose, is because they make mistakes”, and then remove 50% of the usefullness of SADAR (lowering the AP stun duration to 2 seconds).
it’s not an OP ability, you just have to play around it. and it’s fine because queen is the most important role in the round, if you manage to kill it you get massive advantage and a shitton amount of time to kill everything else
The more I’ve seen the salt in the thread, the more I kinda really want screech to be removed so other castes can be buffed now that they’re not balanced around the insanity that is a screenwide stun…
Maybe I’m going insane, chat am I going insane?
Yes, but i’d rather have them happen at the same time in this case, instead of nerfing what is what some people call a crutch currently. We don’t want 6 months of marine speed runs because “Op ability needs nerfed with no recompose”.
You’re almost there, since you’re trying I feel compelled to help, let me break it down for you
how are marines able to win if an ability is overpowered?
Because the ability user AND (this is the important part) his team make mistakes
In other words, xenos lose because they make mistakes. So do marines. It’s kind of a common thing across all games.
Basically, even with overpowered abilities, a team can lose because the players aren’t perfect. It’s not a comment on screech or about anything else in particular, its only a generic answer as to why a side can lose even if overpowered.
The rest of your unquoted post is random stuff you made up based on your misunderstanding. If it’s still not clear I suggest asking chat GPT.
This is also true, btw.
and I technically lowered it to 2 seconds by fixing a bug here Bugfix: AP RPG stun times (!2095) · Merge requests · CM Devs / CM13 · GitLab in 2022. lol
Damn, thats a lot of insults, too bad I’m not reading them.
But on a serious note, you didn’t seem to read my answer as well it seems. I commented on how absurdly irrelevant it is to say “The only way people lose, is by making mistakes”. And then I just came up with something on the spot to show how absolutely worthless of a statement it is when talking about balance changes.
Yeah, youre right. I shoulda have said 1.5 seconds, since the stun is 3 seconds right now 
.
stop shitflinging or mods will can the thread
Yeah Gold can you tone it down? Insulting other people publically isnt going to make the PR any more appealing 
I wouldn’t say immediately proven, commonly uttered blanket statements about the playerbase or pointing out how someone didn’t understand a sentence and made up things I didn’t say qualifies as an insult.
As for the appeal, anyone interested should just read the git comments. The entire “discussion” boils down to explaining to people why screech is a bad ability (it’s an objecive fact) or why what they believe to be a counter, is in fact not a valid counter but a method to bait mistakes by the other player. Most people aren’t even aware shaking up is detrimental because it’s better to run and shoot than to waste time creating bodyblockers. It’s absolutely pointless to “discuss” this, time would be better spent brainstorming abilities for the queen that can actually be added with screech being nerfed.
I.e idc for the thread besides clarifying what I meant and dont intend to participate in the goop beyond that.
(to GoldenDarkness’ post above this)
So you’re saying the counters to Queen screech aren’t actually counters but they’re just strategies to “bait mistakes by the other player.”
That’s like saying the counter to lurker (having a teammate with a shotgun that doesn’t get pounced and is next to you) isn’t actually a counter but just baiting a mistake from the lurker (it shouldn’t have pounced == mistake).
You’re just rewording the counters to make it seem like they aren’t counters, when in fact, they are the counters that experienced marine players have been using for years.