How I see it now is that the game is just currently in favor of marines, yes there has been nerfs to both sides but the xeno ones are particularly bad.
I have no issue concerning warrior/lurker nerfs, warriors often being able to kill marines more easily than T3s was always troublesome. Nor do I have too much problems with being unable to build on nodes or burrower able to burrow out of DS.
What I am more troubled with is the queen building nerf and the 1 larva per cap nerf. The queen one because devs wanted to have queen stay on ovi more often only to nerf one of their most important abilities. The larva nerf because it severely depletes xenomorphs.
Compare to this with the marine nerfs, sure the IB changes can hurt marines if they are not careful with it, but I can fix an IB in 30 second as a medic and by the time I’m done healing it, that marine is ready to blast more xenos. Even in the worse case scenario where a marine has lost a lot of blood, it won’t take more than 5 minutes to refill it with a syringe and food.
HPR being more rare isn’t as troublesome as people think since marines still got the m41 which is incredibly good. I can go on but I believe you understand me.
So now what you have as xenomorphs is if you don’t win the first engagement with marines, it’s a progressively uphill battle where you have less and less chance of winning. Marines will get necromanced by a medic and fixed in around 5 minutes, while if you die as a xenomorph it’s pretty much guaranteed you won’t play for the rest of the round. Now routing a marine attack in caves and getting caps is often is not enough to replenish your numbers to successfully assault the FOB.
On top of all that, you have now echo squad and nukes available for marines. You just perma’d a large number of marines in caves? Get ready to fight a new wave of marines with your depleted numbers.
I believe xenos will neednew buffs or have access part of their old techwebs if we keep the current larva nerf, but currently for me they are just frustrating to play as.
Yea most xenos just fearrp now (myself included) because we only get one life. The second you stop fearrping you die and wait an hour for next round.
Yea only way to win as xeno now is instant curbstomp of marines, which is really just not fun to do at all for anybody. Spend 50 mins waiting for combat between rounds, just for combat to end in 6 mins then you wait another 50 for next cycle.
Otherwise you just lose from attrition; I think it was yesterday chi queen on lv fragged hard, killed like 30 marines, capped a shitload, just for more foxtrot to spawn and xenos to keep dying. Xenos lost what should have 100% been a victory if not for the new misbalance.
Honestly you either nerf xeno strength, or xeno numbers. Presently both castes and numbers have been steadily getting nerfed into oblivion and it’s just not fun to play at all.
Now there’s also this gem
The only good thing for xenos in recent memory has been bonus evo, since it meant there was still a chance you could play T3 if you don’t get t2 slot roundstart. So now bonus evo is basically useless.
Edit: forgot about this one too
I’m sorry for the copium fueled posts, I’m just tired of being greeted with a new xeno nerf every time I start my computer.
SubjectD is right, even though both sides are getting nerfed, the xeno nerfs far outweigh the marine ones in severity.
I get game is “undergoing major balance changes” but there are some changes presently that make playing xeno such pain they don’t warrant a 2 month trial period before devs realize “damn aight this is a bit unbalanced.” We’re trying to tell y’all right now, it’s not balanced or fun. Please listen to input from people who actively play the side you’re nerfing.
If you have plans for future integrations to counterbalance the current misbalance, is it not possible to just implement the nerfs after you’ve developed the proper solutions to balance them so the game isn’t bongwater all summer?
Well, according to Morrow themselves, «balance is a journey». This means there is no plan behind these nerfs, devs just throwing nerfs at players to see what happens. This PR (though closed) illustrates this very well:
Basically, we had a problem: xenos had too many numbers roundstart, so when the marines landed, marines met too strong resistance. To solve this issue devs reduced shipside roles weight and larva per cap. That brought new problem — it became very hard to latejoin or rejoin as xeno. So supposedly to solve this issue devs tried to implement mentioned PR… that (if merged) would make roundstart xeno numbers busted again. It’s a goddamn cycle.
Something in my brain has said “its over” and its stuck on the “its over” section and its not flipping to the “we’re so back” section. Even when larva queue sharply kicked the “its over” dial, it did not flip to “we’re so back” yet.
These nerfs unfortunately are targeted to deal with the good xeno players, but what we’re not understanding is that it’s making it unplayable for new players; and they are just straight wasting 3+ larva in a round with only a singular larva from a cap. Is it their fault? Absolutely not, even my copium aside; they are trying to learn, but the learning is at the detriment of the hive.
New player tries to learn runner? Five times in a row, now the hive is out of larva, caps are not bursting fast enough to keep up with it and frustration rises from players waiting to get larva that should be there if people weren’t in their learning mental stage.
Okay, I will cope and deal with it.
Ovi was nerfed.
Okay I will deal with it.
Lurker was nerfed.
Okay I will deal with it.
Warrior was nerfed.
Okay I will deal with it.
Building in general was nerfed.
Okay I will deal with it.
Burrower was nerfed.
Okay I will deal with it.
Carrier is useless.
Okay I will deal with it.
Oppressor is dog.
Okay I will deal with it.
Dancer has that skill ceiling but people constantly fill up the t3 slots with it.
Okay I will deal with it.
Everyone is lost on every map and needs a mark, 8 announcement, a force track.
Okay I will deal with it.
Prae in general besides base & warden is dog.
Okay I will deal with it.
Base crusher is dog.
Okay I will deal with it.
Rav is the only scary t3.
Okay I will deal with it.
Spitter is dog.
Okay I will deal with it.
Steelcrest is actual paper vs everything.
Okay I will deal with it.
They don’t want you taking bodies back to the hive?
Okay I will deal with it.
They don’t want you to perma marines?
Okay I will deal with it.
You cannot build on a node without killing the weeds in the area?
Okay I will deal with it.
Boiler is still boring, except now you have to get within sadar range to do the same shit you would do previous.
Okay I will deal with it.
30 minute nuke on LV
Okay I will deal with it.
The switch refuses to switch to “we’re so back.” There’s still 2 screen wide cas. There’s still people glitching into walls to avoid combat with m2cs and m56d. We’re still sitting in the fob for hours at a time with people handing out nukes to reward them for sitting in the fob. I legit read someone saying that as a survivor they instantly get attacked by runners when they spawn in. (mechanically impossible because shit was intentionally changed to hand hold them) You lose all your evo. No one is sitting on ovi because that shit is trash, and if they do sit on ovi its because they are A) Bald B) Afk C) both
This may be an ok change, because xeno sustainment even at 2 was often not enough to stop that classic attrition spiral.
But what worries me is this little sentence there: “Needs to coincide with a bunch of various xeno nerfs or it’s just too much as is.”. See, a bunch more xeno nerfs are coming. Seems like we’re in a new era of Xeno NPC-zation and it’s kinda schizo:
No, we don’t want you to contest the colony. We’re going to lower your numbers so that you realistically can’t. We’re going to lower your sustainment. We’re also going to nerf those capping castes, so that they won’t cap that much. But, yeah, you also have to contest the colony 2 hours later, when marines build a megafob and a there’s massive cade fort at every comms location and there’s like 80 of them camping the beach still.
I’ve recently played a 3 hour LV round as a marine and even though there was no nuke merged, marines would still not be bothered to push.
As for the xeno corpse dragging removal, I think we should also make IOs uncappable and unslashable, because god forbid, xenos having any counterplay to marine mechanics. Also, get ready for the stims now.
Ungodly amounts of copium are present in this thread, and while I agree with some of the points raised - CM is innovating and cutting off the mold which has been present for a while ie xeno/marine balance being neglected.
I do not agree with some of the changes, but you must recognise that the changes are necessary to facilitate a better game. The status quo, while is the status quo is not always a good thing.
Xenos have always fear RP’d, so anyone bringing that point up is a bit silly.
I don’t know what balance is being dictated upon. The changes in general scoot from one direction into the opposite on a dime. People are being pigeonholed into roles and sometimes it feels like an active punishment for performing too well.
There’s very little rhyme or reason outside of ‘because i said’ in some of these changes. Citing balance is just a cop-out at this point.
“Balance” has always been a dev/staff cop-out. They SAID “we want transparency” then removed W/L ratio displays. They state things will be “good for the game” or “a buff to X even if it 95% don’t comprehend how”. Without a stated goal for the alleged “balance” the term is meaningless, giving them endless leeway to mess with things.
CM is so over. Balance is ruined to hell, boring stalemates rounds(that are apparently ok for the devs), RP is not needed, all the shipside roles are mostly useless, xenos are just MOBA gamers that are being nerfed due to marines’ incompetence, revival time is being raised to 7 minutes.
Though I don’t really mind the balance, the only thing I want is Aliens immersion or at least parody of it, but we have none of it as well. It is just Team Fortress 2 server or CS:GO, just a TDM game.
Honestly most of the xeno nerfs minus larva extra larva removal and queen build time being nerfed have been pretty good for balance. Maybe if anything that second larva that was removed should just be added to every xeno player so they can die once and respawn as their respective buried larva after a timer to reduce the xeno hardcore no hit any% type of stakes it really feels it takes to be xeno main. What was lurker nerf?
Thats one of the most annoying things about xeno nerfs.
Two good players show you high high the skill cap is, and then xenos get a nerf that greatly changes how a caste plays. Most negatively affecting lower skilled players, and modestly affecting the high skill ones.
im still confused as to why people dont think xenos should be able to build on top of resin nodes? because then you have to destroy a wall to kill the node? You should be clearing walls as you push anyway. This greatly nerfs queens building ability. Its not like queen can build walls on top of traps or something, its just a resin node. If anything let them build and just remove the node when its built on top of making them replant one outside the walls.
Minor QOL change that I think is a fair one. Being able to build nodes under walls just makes the process of clearing our weeds more tedious than it needs to be.
Especially if the builder puts walls in distant corners that are out of the way. The low level of effort it takes to spam nodes under walls versus the high amount of effort to clear walls and nodes felt incompatible and unfair.
You can still construct nodes under doors which remains an option for strategic placement of nodes.
Thats one of the most annoying things about xeno nerfs.
Two good players show you high high the skill cap is, and then xenos get a nerf that greatly changes how a caste plays. Most negatively affecting lower skilled players, and modestly affecting the high skill ones.
This is the nature of high skill floor/high skill ceiling design. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like to see balance around exclusively the best players, because then you get this exact sort of situation. This should be something to think hard about for all those players who think everything is just a “skill issue” and you just need to “get gud”; you end up with a game catering to 2% of the player population. How much fun do you think the other 98% are having?
Of course there’s also issues with ignoring high level play; but that’s the nature of balance, a little bit of both so everyone is having fun is good. Don’t slant it too casual or too hardcore.
They are a hive mind, whats there to role play really?
Exactly; there’s no factionalization so there’s no RP. Soon as you introduce another hive or even ferals, you start to see xeno RP taking place. Anything that adds ‘xeno-aligned’ groups, including cultists, will start to introduce RP elements to xenos naturally.
Yeah presently I’m 99% certain nobody plays xeno to RP. There’s nothing to roleplay, you’re a braindead extension of the queens’ will with no free will, thought, personality or individuality; basically an ant; you can’t talk about most things or make references to stuff humans know, or risk getting bwoinked for LRP, so lots of people eventually just start opting to stay silent…yeah, that can get old after a while. Unless you’re a greeno, or there are other hives, xeno players just play to fight or build, and now both of those things are being nerfed.
I could level this point right back at you. Everyone saying “building walls on nodes is stupid, it’s annoying to clear as a marine.” Well guess what, trying to build around them as queen is even more annoying.
When marines are clearing caves, what else do you have to do except break walls and nodes?
When you’re building as a queen, there’s a massive delay for placing nodes, which is a pain in the ass unto itself, and it costs plasma you need to budget for emergency heals or top-ups for builders. Now you also have to deal with delayed building as a queen, which is even more pain.
I think there was a nerf to one of the vamp lurker abilities, as well as base lurker’s solo-capping ability ཀ ʖ̯ ཀ
