Thoughts on combat queen

General Discussion
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For me when playing marine, it gets a bit stale having to play around queen screech and neurospit. The most optimal way to play is wait a few screens behind the main force and essentially do nothing until you hear queen screech and either rush down the queen or shake the marines ahead of you. If you decide to frontline with a queen active (someone has to do it) chances are very high that you will be tackled down during the long stun time and capped/round ended.

It appears to me that xeno balance is reliant on queen, so when the queen is bald it is pretty easy game for marines. It appears that the most optimal way to play is to go out of ovi on first drop while you still have all of your t3’s and t2’s have banked up the 500 evo points and bum rush marines.

I have not played much xeno, but it also appears that they are super reliant on queen for capping marines. I would see the queen devote most of her time to solo capping marines with the neuro spit. I guess that is another issue is that being on ovi gameplay is not as fulfilling as being a combat queen.

Obviously, I am biased as I play marine a lot. I would love to learn your other perspectives such as from xeno mains. I think if queen was nerfed and the other castes were universally buffed in exchange would lead to interesting gameplay.

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there’s a reason when I watch more experienced players once combat queen starts they just leave and go fight somewhere else

it’s really all you can do unless you want to sit there and be the shake guy or guarantee getting capped, means xenos have a super comically easy time recovering from low numbers because there’s plenty of clueless players who don’t understand fully whats going on and effectively feed caps in the double digits

sucky mechanic, especially during lowpop where 1 decent screech + 1 decent CC xeno = round over
ive put forward some suggestions on how to fix it but ultimately it’s a pretty deeply rooted rot

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I see it the same way I see combat COs. Its not really what i want, but it is very understandable to have them NOT be buckled down a chair for the entire round.

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Well, yeah, screech is not the most fun ability. There’s actually a bit of marine tactics on how to play against it, but no kidding here, pretty often you’d be capped even if you do everything right. Embarce the suck, as the old admins used to say.

On the xeno side, with all the nerfs to xeno sustain, they do struggle a bit with attrition, so effectively capping Queen is what usually keeps them in the game.

I think there’s a bit of a consensus that nobody would really mind Queen reworked and maybe given some kind of a different combat kit. But so far nobody was able to design\code a good one. Also, since most of the people most loudly complaining about the Queen are the newer marine-only players, they usually don’t go as far as “xenos should be buffed to compensate” part and finish on “xenos shouldn’t get anything to compensate, they should cope”, so those discussions are usually somewhat unproductive.

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definitely a big part of it. lots of “remove screech!” very constructive input on what to replace it with, nuking screech would drastically alter WR and the flow of the game because the omnipresent threat the queen imposes by simply existing on the frontline is one of the main deterrents to marine hellpush.

I think King’s screech is a good example of how to do a strong CC abiliy without simply “ur stunned get capped now” but I don’t think that version is quite powerful enough to be the deterrent that is needed unless it’s on a very short CD.

screech isn’t even really fun for xenos imo clicking downed defenseless sprites isn’t exactly engaging.

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It’s been a problem for the game’s whole life, but somehow it’s even worse now than it used to be.

I just want Queen to be interesting to fight as and against. Screech just isn’t it.

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I LOVE clicking stunned marines as berserker and get free hits to then evicerate like 12 marines at once. It is one of the most satisfying things.

And I also work as a “Get down madam president!” since I will be on the queen constantly for the aformentioned reason.

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it’s even worse now than it used to be.

Well kind of because xenos are more reliant on it now. It’s apparently a LOT harder for xenos to hold the line nowadays without the queen from the recent rounds I’ve played, much less get significant numbers of caps.

With how steamroll-y marines appear to have gotten it kind of feels like xenos are just holding out until the queen decides to get up and singlehandedly bring about the win with constant screech attrition or getting gunned down and dooming the hive to die. Either way, the xenos don’t seem to be able to do much without the queen’s involvement anymore.

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9

Frankly while I’ve no clue how to change it I do support the idea that hive should NOT be so dependent on queen for everything. Nor should the queen be able to instantly stun a entire screens worth of people who can do nothing about it while they get dragged away or murdered (And no. Get good isn’t valid when 90% of the marine players don’t know how to shake someone up or out of stun and even that isn’t enough to stop a few caps per screech) Maybe taking screech and giving other classes AOE attacks to counter death balling would work but hell if I know.

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You do yourself a favor categorically ignoring anyone who says that; as virtually nobody who says it is offering an actual argument. It’s just about exclusively used to passive aggressively insult someone - and offers no explanation or insight to anything and adds nothing to any discussion.

People just resort to it when they disagree but can’t or don’t want to articulate why they do.

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Xenos used to have a lot more AoE abilities.

Some of the current ones that were very good but got nerfed is the Crusher’s stomp used to be AoE and was like a 3 second stun instead of the micro stun it is now.

Prae acid spray (the one that goes in a line) used to stun for much longer than the paltry amount it does now, and did more damage (so you couldn’t just tank it and keep chasing).

Spitter classes in general used to do more burn damage which forced marines to cooperate through slugs or rushing a spitter down together, or nading, or anything but the current chug unga and tank like 10 spit shots till you finally slow down.

Ravager charge used to stun for longer and Ravager in general did more permanent damage (they had a higher delimb chance). I do not want to bring that back since we have no way to print organic limbs and the robotic ones are TOTAL FUCKING ASS, but that also slowed marines down.

Honestly, there is SO much that has happened to the meta that has made it impossible for xenos to hold against a marine unga ball that is all accumulated together to create the current Queen-dependent meta that you’d have to go down the changelog for hours to understand whats going on and where the meta went wrong.

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I find sitting on ovi as queen as boring. You get to watch others play while passing on some healing and remote building. This is why I haven’t really touched SO/XO. It’s more fun to actually be at the front fighting marines/xenos and playing with your team.

The nerf to remote build speed has made it awful to engage with while on ovi. You’re even more incentivised to deovi once strong building has ended and go lead from the front. Whatever is done to make combat queen fun to play against also has to be fun to play from queens perspective.

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Combat Queen, and the pure strength of the Queen, is something I find myself disliking.

As a Xenomorph, the Queen being mobile, presuming the player is good at the game, is an incredible asset and is often outright necessary to stop a Marine advance. A queen can easily stun an entire marine force, giving the xenos a chance to kill or capture whole swarths of marines with little effort.

How many times have you seen a comeback of single digit xenos surviving and capping enough marines to eventually either extend the round or outright cause a xeno victory?

I almost feel like it would be more engaging if the basic xenomorphs were made stronger or more capable of crowd control, rather than all the power of the hive being concentrated into a single player. But, I have no idea how you’d accomplish this balance wise.

But, being dragged off to Narnia by a Runner just because you dared to be near a frontline with an active Queen when she decides to pull off a screech is a terrible feeling. All the experienced players will just hang far back, and everyone else gets to die or be captured.

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fun fact: marines have literally always been that way, at least since sulaco days

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I believe one way to sum up the replies so far is we should weaken screech but giving more xenos some level of anti murder ball (spread it and give it to more classes), and give ovi queen something to do (fuck if I know what) to help that isn’t boring to encourage the hive being able to not necessarily completely win but at least be a lot less dependent on a single ability to actually hold against death murder balls

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the spectre of DOR looms over cm

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17

Good luck buffing regular xenos and not making them busted in the process

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The problem isn’t that the meta has gone wrong.

The problem, actually, is that no one wants to take up the thankless task of being cussed out and shit on by both players and maintainers alike to fix the overall balance of the server. So what happens is that one contributor thats brave enough makes micro changes that do not fix the overall powercreep problem but only fix one, and get lucky enough that it gets put through by a maintainer, and so the meta only gets changed slowly but surely.

But what needs to happen is a full sitdown by all maintainers and a couple of people (WHO ARE UNBIASED AND WILLING TO LISTEN TO EACH OTHER) from BOTH MARINE AND XENO SIDES and actually have day or even week long meetings where they discuss each facet of both sides to see what needs to be tweaked in order to make the meta more bearable.

They will have to discuss these factors for both sides (since I believe the King and Comms TM will probably be full merged to be completely honest considering development’s track record):

DEFCON and how it interacts with both Marines and Xenos (spawn points of intel, how much intel is given per item and if its fair or needs to be nerfed or increased, stationary intel points like engineering and comms should give more or less intel or should there be more mechanics attached to it as a way to divide and conquer marines organically away from front while still supporting it and making it more or less interesting for backline castes to interact with, etc.)

Marine equipment / numbers and how both sides interact with attrition of said equipment (CAS, Mortar, OB’s, their strengths and weaknesses, etc).

Xeno health and armor, castes, strains, and how they are positives or negatives to interact with or if their intended purpose is even being done correctly.

After these meetings and addressing each of these topics or more, solutions should be propose and then the proper tweaks made into a mega TM PR that would run for a week or more to test how it would work in a live server then have it actually be discussed during the time it is up to see what needs to be changed and gather public feedback as well.

All of this only requires proper communication, organization, and number changes which do not require a lot of development knowledge (I used to do this on TGMC except by myself instead of in a group, and if I can do it, so can you).

The problem starts with the fact that this is a free project that anyone can be part of and is not a full time job so people have other commitments such as real life events, work, touching grass, and general burnout from the game. Throw in the clash of egos (“YOUR A XENO MAIN”, “YOUR A MARINE MAIN”, “ALL YOU DO IS PLAY SURVIVOR THEN OBSERVE YOUR OPINION IS SHIT”) and you have the current state of CM balance where the only real change we get is incremental changes most of the time, with the one or two brave individuals willing to throw in their hat and get hated on (such as the Xeno Endgame TM).

TL;DR just get used to it till someone brave enough makes a radical PR and gets it accepted regardless of its hate or become the hero, because not enough people will actually come together to change the balance in a proper way anytime soon.

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19

Combat queen is incredibly weak design wise.
She got jackshit in her toolset.
How little? She is the most empty cast of all.
There is no other cast that can do so little.
She can

  1. Slash
  2. Tailstab
  3. Spit Acid/neuro
  4. Screech

Thats it, and half of those abilitys are something EVERY xeno can do.
She has 2 “uniqe” abilitys in her toolkit. 2. Its so bad.
Combat queen is the worst combat cast of all because of it.
Like, yes. If she is on cooldown for screech she should be more vulnrabel.
But not, i can only sit in the back and play point and click for a while.

Combat queen is such a bad cast.

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This may change if someone actually codes a proper combat queen kit. But the problem I’m struggling with is that it’s easy to make up a mid kit, but hard to make a good kit that’s gonna be properly balanced, oppressive enough, but not cancerous.

What I could come up in like 5 minutes is something like this:

  1. Normal crusher charge, but very small charge delay, also pretty small cooldown, so she should be zooming around.
  2. AOE tail sweep, 2-3 seconds stun, medium cooldown.
  3. Single person “Ur dead” 80+ damage nuke. Maybe make it some kind of a meme, like high delimb chance.
  4. No neuro or screech.

But this is still kind of mid and boring, because it’s Crusher+.

Also @Vaikas is correct, there’s a lot about xeno that really shouldn’t be buffed if we’re getting rid of the screech, becuase quite a few castes are already bordering on overpowered. So, they should mostly be getting other new capabilities to compensate.