I don’t really have an opinion on all of the “balance” centric reasons when it comes to the changes, but the lore and RP justifications for them feel so out of place to me. You get a distress signal to a known UA or WY colony-site on most maps, and the standard response process is to deploy nerve-gas around the colony for whatever reasons?
It’s like calling the police and 20 minutes before they arrive, they tear gas your entire driveway and neighborhood for whatever-reasons to be “safe”.
On a tangent note, the overall LZ protections themselves don’t really seem that intuitive from a gameplay standpoint either. Nobody was complaining about aliens being on the LZ on the first-drop as long as it’s not T3s (which rarely, rarely happen), simply the initial firepower of the marines on landing was always enough to handle the 1-2 runners or young aliens that ever bothered with it in seconds after landing.
What people have been complaining about was the overall speedrunny pace of the rounds, which typically happens between the 2nd drop and 1245 caused by frontline results being so skewed after the first encounters in a number of the rounds.
At best the LZ protection just offer a small peace of mind for marines, and that’s it. If the marine front is destroyed by 1235-1240, the hive can still speedrun and overwhelm the LZ on 2nd drop with or without the turrets still working.
It’s extremely stale and cheesy. Only reason people were holding LZs is that xenos couldnt weed there, and the reason xenos cannot weed LZ had nothing to do with survs. I don’t like the implementation, but something had to be done about this.
Real question here IMO is how do we make survivor fun and have a chance to survive after the change, but the change was necessary. Don’t revert it.
true tis was mostly a cheese hold. but really it happen most do to the surv nerf, we need to make to buff the surv a bit more of course not back like in the days of SPEC OPs CIVs but at lest better than it is now.
Could have surv skills be proportional to the amount of survs left. Like 7/7 survs alive means they have their basic skills, but by the time there is only 1 surv left they get maxed out. Something something horror movie final survivor
honk mimimimimimimi
lean gas and sentries were meant first to prevent xeno metarush and surv crap was an afterthought since the main gameplay loop is not the survs; the preferences of 7 people opting for the hardmode role dont outweigh the preferences of the other 150 people playing the game; play CC or CL for civvy RP roles where you’ll survive, doctor 2 doctor, MT to engi, etc etc
first time hearing survivor being called a roleplay role lol. maybe there’s like a few people who go survivor for rp(not including colony synths), but that’s about it. most of them are tdm enjoyers that go surv for a chance to survive to become a pfc+ and kill bad xenomorphs
Unless a surv goes doom slayer mode on the drones you are right. I’d rather there be more for survs after they are rescued by the marines like extraction and what not.
I do agree, survivors are mostly HRP people (perhaps we should reconsider adding more WLs).
My favorite part of their HRP is breaking into CIC with wepon in hand while screaming about IFF to then run to REQ to ask for HRP tools (such as m2c). Then they deploy to finish with HRP revenge act while they kill evil xenos who killed their friends in the colony while screaming "i killed rav and crusher, please give me medal now!!! "
When are we going to stop tricking ourselves into believing that survivors are not just flavored versions of corpman, comtech, cl, and rifleman?
CM is TDM, survivor is a groundside role. You’re meant to play it as a groundside role, and if you really dont want to do that then just go and lockerhide. People already do that.
Also its been the norm for as old the role has existed for, that survivors would basically troll each other and make silly remarks, try out goofy strategies and do the most ridiculous things, so its kind of odd hearing that playing survivor like how it’s intended to be played is inherintly LRP/counter intuitive to roleplay when it never really existed there to begin with (with the exception of inserts and synthetics)?
From what I’ve observed, survivors are actually leveraging this change and in general surviving better (namely in places where they can make a hold where there is only one way to get to them such as with the gas to their back). No doubt some maps are easier to survive on than others, and that’s fine. Its never been the case survivors are intended to always die, nor has it ever been the case survivors are intended to always survive. It gives a bit of looter/shooter aspect to the game and serves as a dynamic roleplaying tool to give more weight to the story of whatever happened to the colony. Either marines will find a failed attempt by the last remaining survivors, or maybe there will be a few that manage to survive and tell the tale.
I have not yet seen how the sunrise mechanic has affected survivors yet, but it should make the early game aspect of survivor that much easier too and even more cinematic since the early parts of the round will have illumination so easier to find loot and easier to spot xenomorphs.
The miasma succeeded in getting survivors to find new holds, succeeds in bringing survivor holds closer to areas that xenos are able to weed, and succeeds in getting xenos out of LZs before drop (namely new xeno players that are investigating a LZ survivor hold and get dropped on by marines).
I can agree gassed LZs isn’t the perfect solution, but the alternative would be forcefield fog that makes even less sense. The miasma allows the LZs to still be looted early in the round, and allows for brief exposure so you can dip into it such as to make it to the other side (see west LZ on LV624 for example).
I recommend actually playing with the changes rather than just speculating.
I’d personally just want weeding restrictions off with the current changes. Maybe make the gas a weed killer incase you don’t want suicidal lessers charging in to weed the gas.
What survivor need is that Alien:Isolation gameplay. I already posted this idea somewhere not so long ago:
Make survs invisible to xeno thermals till some arbitrary point like few minutes after marines land, or something. Add civilian makeshift MD that is fairly silent, but has no IFF and pings at any movement, something you can make out of proximity sensors and other crap.
This will give survivors another way to play, which would be silent roaming, while xenos would have to watch themselfs passing each corner not to get PB suprised.
Give survivors 3-4 tile natural nvg they lose exactly when they lose their xeno thermal invisibility.
Gas on LZs might be a bit silly, but as said above it is either that, or super dense fog that is there for some reason.
The only other solution that makes a bit more sense IC would be some super powerfull sentry gun being dropped two minutes roundstart just like the gas is. Dropping a sentry that you IC control sounds better than dropping a nerve gas that DS landing just sweeps somewhere to kill whatever wildlife and other colonies they are on the planet.
It would just buff early xeno siege potential and nothing else. Do we want, or need to buff early game xeno siege potential?
