Nerfs queen screech and re-adds bombard to ovi state #7188

General Discussion
44

No, having someone near you to remove the stun or PB the lurker is a valid counter. Assuming no mistakes happen (not realistic, but still) the lurker is unable to do anything without dying, it’s countered. Even if it doesn’t make the mistake of attacking the counter persists - it’s deterred from engaging entirely.

Or she just doesn’t walk off far enough where you can actually punish her with that - i.e for you to “counter” screech, it requires her making a mistake and walking off far enough into the open and then screeching badly. Her walking out and screeching doesn’t necessarily result in her death, because it relies on her positioning, not you “countering” her. She has to make a positioning mistake first before screeching for the “screech counter” to be effective, you do not counter the screech itself, but capitalize on the queen’s mistake. The queen still has valid ways of using the screech that make your “counter” pointless, therefore it’s different from the lurker scenario, where any engage it attempts is a mistake.
With queen, if you all run and wait a screen away the queen can just choose to neurodrag the poor fella who didn’t or couldn’t, at that point you’re losing the player - wouldn’t call that a counter - or rushing in and getting screeched anyway. Even assuming perfect play as with the lurker, the only counter to scree is not to play - you all run back and xenos retake all the ground because you cannot contest them beyond screen edge firing or scopes.

Technically you could argue diminishing effectiveness is a soft-counter and thus a counter, but the way I see it - assuming nonperfect/realistic play this time - there’s a major difference in scaring away a lurker and turning a death into a bonebreak because you have a buddy nearby, vs losing 5 players to screech instead of 10 because people positioned properly. To me, one looks like an actual counter, the other looks more like cope.
I.e At most you can diminish the effectiveness of screech somewhat, but still pay a price large enough that it doesn’t feel like much of a counter - it still leads to you losing if repeated several times, you’re just dragging it out hoping for the queen to make a mistake. Counters do not rely on the other party making mistakes, it’s just a lack of counter if it boils down to the “just dodge”(just hope he misses).

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I really have to wonder if a lot of the xeno players who are saying screech has to stay have ever actually played marine and had to deal with screeches, regularly getting screeched and having a runner come drag you off and there is literally nothing you can do about it except not play.

I wonder if some of these people have ever tried to attempt a flanking maneuver only to hear queen stomps and watch in horror as the less experienced players in your midst continue to attempt to push the flank, and are free caps to the hive

Queen screech sucks, it’s miserable, there is absolutely nothing fun about a “don’t play on the frontline where the xenos are” mechanic, and the only reason people are defending it is because the game has been balanced hackily around it and they’ve had years to get used to it.

THAT BEING SAID

I don’t believe the PR in it’s current state properly addresses the tradeoffs for weakening the screech, swapping a nerf for the bombard is like realizing you’re out of PB for your PBJ and subbing it out with mayo, it doesn’t fix the missing hole. (and that’s ignoring how boiler gas spawning anywhere near weeds is just as lame as screech just in a different way, comtechs on suicide watch)

the first suggestions that come to mind are giving the queen a spitter-esque armor and movespeed buff when screeching, allowing her to take more damage(potentially deal more damage), and evade when she’s used the window.

another could be a limited time of way boosted pheros during a screech, etc.

IMO a better example of the crowd control aggro-enabling play of a T4 is the king’s shield ability, which allows xenos to be more aggro(or covers their retreat) and serves a similar purpose in stopping ungaballing without just being a “you’re capped GG”

as for “where are xenos gonna get their caps” tbh the fact most xeno caps come from screeching is a mindset issue, you regularly see xenos of a variety of castes killing what could be easy captures-- warriors are the most obv example, how many times do you see warriors killing people they have way behind the xeno lines just to inflate their kill count. (there’s honestly a ton of goofy ez ways to capture marines, see: lurker+hugger)

people say shake but as someone who usually dedicates themselves with binocs to counter-screech shaking from shortly off screen once the queen is in play, this doesn’t really work, before you even factor in bodyblocking there are enough xenos that are fast as, if not faster than the average marine at that point in the game (with fracs and whatnot esp) that can drag off a few people on the frontline before you can even get close.

I’d be interested to see what ideas people can come up with to buff queen as a tradeoff for lessened screech without just as unavoidable death for marines-- I think in general the king xeno has a lot of stuff right here, but I wouldnt want to advocate for a copy paste of king’s mechanics to queen either. (stuff like turning off lights and purging reagents has a strong stopping power for unga rushes without just taking you out of the game)

5 Likes
46

I am just concerned that nerfing the crutch, without giving xenoes something of equal value, is going to lead to marine steemrolls for the next 6 months to a year. and a lot of people have the same concerns. Screech is the biggest murderball killer, as the more you screech, the more xenoes get free hits and whatever on marines, and it snowballs from there. Now screech is gonna be nerfed by half the duration, and the stun radius.

I am honestly dreading it being testmerged for like a week when nobody has gotten around to play it, then it gets added, and a week later marine murderballs become the next big thing for the aformentioned 6-12 months since nobody bothers with shit like that (unless they revert the change).

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47

keep in mind SG deathball was recently heavily buffed with the vision/falloff changes.

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48

I personally like this Pr a lot. Bade idea to have the screech cause debuffs instead of hardstuns definitly seem more fun. Honestly just needs some tweaks to work.

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49

oka y i thought about this and actually it’s real bad and shouldnt happen, if we remove screenwide stun ability it will shrimply justify removing my screenwide gigabomba as an OT and that of course would make me very sad :frowning: please let me keep nuking the xenos with a grenade that fits in a pocket i need to be the protag and hard carry marines

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50

Screech counterplay is essentially fear RPing and running back every time you hear stomps and then unga rush incase queen actually screeches instead of just neuro’ing and capping the slowest baldie PVT. In the off chance that she does screech, you gotta pray there isn’t a boiler right behind that denies your push.

When an ability is so powerful that players are forced to not engage or risk almost guaranteed round removal, that may be a sign it needs some changes.

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51
  1. I said this a bit on the git already, but I think this PR as it stands is extremely premature and underdeveloped. Partly cause the game itself is in a bad balance state rn. But also, if you want to do this, the responsibility of balancing it lays on you. Bring forward a new caste/strain (maybe making this an optional strain people could try for a bit), or a whole new properly balanced package to the queen (new abilities, buffs/changes to speed, damage, armor, etc.)

You can’t just bring forward the nerf half, completely fuck over xeno gameplay and leave it up to others to maybe or maybe not figure out some means of properly compensating for your fuckovering later down the line sometime in the (maybe not so) forseeable future, leaving the game in a miserable state in the meantime as people fight for months to try to get any PR that isn’t a xeno nerf to pass.

As it stands if this goes through it’ll essentially just be another xeno nerf.

  1. Discussion isn’t pointless, not everyone has the same opinion as you and your opinion isn’t objective or factually true. Lots of the changes you’ve implemented in the past were questionable at best, and usually came across as somewhat half-assed, no offense. (ie. sentinel, which you’ve only recently tried to rectify after someone called you out for it on this PR’s discussion in github. Or the ravager “changes” which just turned into nerfs).
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52

Agreed. When are we nerfing direct CAS, OT Sadar and other things?

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53

I think it would be badass if we had a queen caste that removes the neurospit and screech but in return is vanguard ++, imagine how cool it would be:

A faster move speed

Something something queen charge

6x3 tile tail slash that hits multiple targets

A regular slash that hits multiple marines like crusher

A cool fling or another disrupting ability :heart_eyes:

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I don’t think that making the Queen a vanguard++ is a good idea, Jean.Vanguard can easily kill 1 marine with 0 counterplay for that marine. But since vanguard has to go out there and take the risk, they normally don’t live that long.

An isolated Queen now can be reliably killed by 3-4 marines. If she does not have screech, then it’s only 2.

If there’s a combat queen, she has to be stronger than the vanguard, right? Vanguard can instanuke 1 marine, how many should the Queen be able to? If its 2 or more and she’s tanky enough to disengage after that, it runs the risk of being just as annoying and hard to kill as the queen is now, because she would be able to solo hit and run marines to a cancerous degree.

The hypothetical combat queen’s role should probably still be initiation, because that’s what the xenos always struggle with. And that initiation should be:
A)Strong enough to reliably initiate on 80 marines supported by CAS and mortar, OB, the ever buffed specs, and the now much improved smartunner ball, sometimes tank too. Also they may or may not be sitting in the FOB.
B)Be fair for the marines. And depending on who you ask, fairness can mean as much as whenever the xenos initiate on that 80 marine ball, the first guy they initiate on in that ball should never die or get capped.

As such both requirements here are a bit contradictory and that’s exactly why the screech has stuck for so long, you can’t really do a good job at fulfilling A without failing B to some extent and vice versa. Screech is unfair, but gimping it just results in having to shift that unfairness elsewhere, with roughly the same end result.

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I think it would be badass and awesome and I think you are lame and I think it should be tried anyways

image

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56

I agree that shying away from a stunlock mechanic is a good idea overall.

Being out manouvered or out played is much easier to palate than being knocked to the ground and unable to move.

I enjoy ravager fights 10x over fighting any lurker or knockdown xeno. Those have a much longer duration and i feel like im actually trying to outhink the ravagers as opposed to being stunlocked.

Bombard is a bit odd, i wonder if it would be better if it was more mass build oriented as oppossed to what boiler already does.

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57

Don’t forget that queen building is pretty problematic too, since she’s gonna use it to trap marines on the front. So you need to somehow keep it more or less useless.

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Expecting people to rework massive aspects the game in a single PR is how you never get things done. I also don’t know what devs want to do with queen as a role - pretty sure handling that’s a community-wide thing.
I don’t think she needs anything to work and while it’d be somewhat cool to make her a combat t4, you risk running into the same issue we have now where the entire hive relies on queen hardcarrying again.

It’s impossible for the game to enter a miserable balance state off this because there’s plenty rounds xenos win without requiring queen screech at all.

Sent buffs were originally opened a year ago, complain to devs. As for rav it was a buff overall, base was nerfed from an op state, but hedge was buffed. Base was supposed to lose less shield aswell but I was told to lower it.
As far as generally fixing things goes im not a dev, dont expect me to magically fix everything unless they decide to make me the guy in charge of approving balance lol

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The question here is whether you’re leaving the game in a better or a worse state with your PR.

There’s no new combat kit introduced for the Queen here, just the existing kit is broken.

The second addition also makes the ovi Queen more annoying to play. I like playing mostly-ovi Queen sometimes, but it’s already taxing even on my somewhat high APM, this just adds another chore you have to do on repeat. And on the marine side being perma bombarded by a ghost boiler is not fun either.

So this is just gonna kill the queen playerbase.

As for the argument that “there’s plenty of xeno wins without requiring queen screech”, well, there are plenty of marine wins against the screech, so what? You didn’t do any statistical analysis as to what percentage of rounds actually requires queen screeches, right?

3 Likes
60

better

no need, not broken

it doesn’t, there’s no high apm required

if you were playing it only for the op ability you didnt like queen gameplay in the first place, talked about this above

no and I don’t need to. Win % might move but it certainly won’t move far enough to break the game, unless bombard turns out to be ridiculously OP

I dunno why waste so much time making these posts, I think you know the answer to them even before you make them. Sorry if they’re genuine.

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And you have no guarantee of it other then “trust me guys, i know whats better”. The actual arogance you are exuding is actually bothersome.

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It’s the same guarantee I have of looking at an apple and knowing it is an apple. I think, therefore I know, if you will.
It’s simply impossible for it to swing winratios massively, because it isn’t a screech removal.
This would be probably easier via jpg of a proper graph than this scuffed numbering, but I cba. You have:

  1. rounds that marines win now

This doesnt interest us, impossible to tell if xeno winrate will rise before seeing it tm’d for a bit

  1. rounds that xenos win now

Out of those we have

  1. 1 rounds that xenos win without screech

remains unchanged

  1. 2 rounds that xenos win with screech

Now you have to divide these into

  1. 2.1 rounds that are just helped (closed out) by queen screeching

This remains mostly unchanged, because screech is not removed

  1. 2.2 actually carried by screech

This is where the impact is felt, which is only a % of the total rounds. Even if it were as high as 40% (doubt), the actual percentage is lesser still since we do not yet know if every round that would require screech to be won is going to be lost with this PR - not only is bombard added, but also screech changes might result in marines trying to rush and simply FF’ing and killing each other.
It might very well be that it it is not in fact easier for marines to push into this - to make an impact you have to be at the front, if you are at the front you are exposed, what happens to the robustos who could backseat and safely dps once this is merged? Do they stop making an impact or do they risk getting killed at the front?
Even if you swung the winratios by the resulting 20-30% the game would not become unplayable.

I.e it’s simply logically impossible for this to swing the game into an unplayable state. It’s not a “trust me guys” as much as “think for a moment and you should reach the same conclusion”, this pretty much applies to everything I’ve said itt. Even during techweb days when marines had wall piercing and all other kinds of bullshit the game did not become entirely unplayable and that was way way worse.

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Right, lets just focus just on this one point for a moment. I’m not a very good queen player, but at a given ovi moment I’m doing some or all of those things:

  • Trying to heal and keep alive an over-extended T3
  • Weeding a secondary direction and building walls there
  • Shitposting in the queenspeak a variation of “TALLS MAD” to keep the morale up high
  • Verbally directing some clueless child to the frontline
  • Transferring plasma to the hivelord building up the main direction
  • Calling a locally annoying REEEING noodle a WORM and if she get close enough I’d slap her too

All those actions demand a pretty high APM to do and you just hand waving it is very telling. Of course you can say that now I’d have to compromise everything listed to just be a ghost boiler 24x7, but that’s exactly the problem I’m talking about.

No, people don’t want to play with a kit that got explicitly ruined. It was a good, playtested kit, but you just went and made it bad. Why play with a bad kit? I would have understood if you would at least introduce a new kit for the queen, the quality of which can be discussed, but you’re not doing that here.

You still don’t understand that this is worse than a screech removal, because screech is something that is bad, but usable and you’re making it both bad and unusable.

The question is not whether this alone swings the game into an unplayble state, but whether it on it’s own is going to make the game worse. For example you can introduce 3 independent bad changes and if you need all 3 to ruin the game, that does not mean that they’re not bad independently. The fact that we’re even discussing the possibility of this being as bad as techwebs is also something to note.

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