I think most of the game balance changes have been alright, I think warrior nerf was long time coming and lurker headbite getting an activation delay doesn’t make it any less powerful. I hate the 90 minute nuke on certain maps but that could be fixed with a rebalancing of how intelligence works and maybe a change in strategy for marines altogether to maybe remove the cade huggability of 90 minute nuke option if you have good intel team. Queen build time delay is lame and I don’t know why that got nerfed, I hear some people speaking about removing Queen screech and her neuro which honestly would absolutely neuter the queen as a combat class, unless they significantly buff slashing and acid attacks in some way. I hope it doesn’t become like that other post “and I’m okay with it now.” or whatever 
It’s QoL for marines, but really tedious for xenos now. Go play drone or hivelord and you will notice how annoying this is.
being forced to reweed because you made walls is pretty annoying, even moreso if you aren’t a drone/hivelord with a weed spam macro setup
at the end of the day, marines should be clearing the walls ANYWAY, it’s just that marines are exceptionally stubborn and don’t want to give themselves carpal tunnel by clicking 10 times on a thick wall with a machete. I’d say that solution is let marines with a timed channel cut down walls with a machete on non harm intents, harm remains the same (saves carpal tunnel)
not acting stupid, that’s a thing they forget sometimes
I’ve been closely observing the meta for the last week or so.
So the low-midpop(11 UTC onward) is now absolutely marine dominated, but that’s fine because that domination would pretty much end the moment MEZ\WEI\WAR\DP\DanielHoc\BOO decides to log in. Don’t see a problem in giving them a challenge.
EU high pop(17 UTC onward) is still fine and somewhat xeno favored, due to the preponderance of high skill xeno players.
US high pop(22 UTC onward until pop death) seems to even more marine dominated now, but that’s been the usual case when someone overnerfs xenos and I don’t play it that much, so don’t have the best knowledge, nor care about it that much.
The biggest problem is still that the gradual move to the very boring static meta has reached the terminal stage. Where it’s all about marine hordes sitting in the MegaFOB on Solaris Ridge, Annex and 522, or camping the beach on LV all the while you stall for the nuke. All while knowing that xenos won’t have the numbers or sustain to have a chance at taking the FOB.
P.S. I forgot to REE about marines now printing 15 man squads on repeat.
It’s not a QOL change when it directly impacts balance. It might be tedious to clear weeds (that take a single hit to destroy with a knife, which literally everyone is equipped with) but leaving them behind is the kind of thing that lets backliners be a massive nuisance.
Even if it was JUST QOL, all you’ve done is shift the annoyance to the other team, which isn’t solving the problem. Its just making it a problem for someone else, and if you consider that an acceptable answer you’re an asshole.
I can live with nerfs to castes (whether warrented or not). But the current changes to larva numbers are not fun. Oh you aren’t cavehugging, you are trying to cap/harrass the backlines/lead a flank? Now you are dead because it didn’t work out for whatever reason. Now you don’t get to play for however long the rest of the round goes on for.
Some of these changes aren’t encouraging interesting plays which might be risky, they force you to do the same shit that works or else you don’t get to play.
The larva nerf is pretty bad, ngl.
I’m gonna go off on another rant.
If the devs want the queen to remain ovi gameplay based then they need to stop punishing xenos for doing their own gameplay design. The reducement of 2 larva per body to 1 just encourages the queen to get off ovi early and start capping.
Its also a pain to casual players who want to just screw around and have fun. As dying even once means you likely won’t get another respawn for another hour to 30 minutes unless xenos are really capping good.
I fully understand from the dev view on why they nerfed the larvae income but it feels like it punishes xenos even harder for a screwup while playing its intended purpose. Yes it makes it so marines don’t get screwed in the ass if 10 people get capped but at the same time the xenos will also be screwed in the ass if they cannot recover their manpower to face the unga hordes.
Personally I feel like if xenos got more options to be able to gain larvae without needing to capture marines it would be pretty good. With marines being able to counter it as long as they know what the xenos are aimming for.
Also the removal of xenos being able to grab xeno bodies feels like a COMPLETE SALT PR.
I have seen so many bodies on the front yet IOs don’t feel like grabbing it. Marines’ dont feel like grabbing it. I usually have to order them around to get them to actually take the body. Why punish xenos for something that IOs/marines are simply not doing / refusing to do?
The only change I would make would to be xeno ban any prime xeno.
Ah yes, the great balancing
Based.
Prime Xenos need to go touch some grass.
we should ban platinum marines too
force plat marines to only be able to roll xeno and vice versa
Reading that maintainer update makes me think that the worst is yet to come - that “Armor rebalance” would probably include those “widespread health/armor/ability nerfs” that they keep talking about.
Anyway, after observing and playing for a couple more nuke camping rounds, I’m starting to wonder, is this is the worst era of CM? Techwebs for all their faults was at least decisive, with xenos hitting that fortified weeds peak where they could actually bite back, provided they survive the onslaught somehow.
I think we’re witnessing another big push towards NPC-zation of xenos, where the only reason why they won’t be getting steamrolled every round is just because marines would be too busy camping for the nuke.
I miss when the goal was 80% xeno win rate. I even liked playing marine more then.
I have seen so many bodies on the front yet IOs don’t feel like grabbing it. Marines’ dont feel like grabbing it.
The reasons for this:
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Fulton is a pain in the ass to communicate and coordinate to the point you sometimes throw your hands up in frustration with completely unresponsive pilots - this could SO easily be improved: Simply have lights flash up on the console in the cockpit when a fulton or medevac is available.
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You can’t realistically haul xeno corpses across the map most of the time. grabbing the T1 bodies and going 1 by 1 is tedious as hell. It gets even worse with the T3’s which are not only slower to drag but you can’t even use a rollerbed on them. And then if they’re in a cave anywhere? Who wants to spend 5 minutes dragging a T3 corpse out of the caves just so it can be fultoned, let alone hauling the rest of the way if you can’t fulton.
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To top it off and compounding on the above, each xeno corpse is worth something like 0.5 intel points which is so little it feels utterly pointless to waste so much of your time bothering with corpses, and not just xeno corpses but ALL of the corpses.
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Although not really as big as the rest - a lot of marines have absolutely no clue that xeno corpses are even valuable for intel nor help marines in any way. This is not communicated to the average grunt at all.
Frankly the entire intel minigame needs a shakeup into something less tedious and more engaging, but notwithstanding that, these are the reasons why you see various xeno corpses sitting around the map never getting picked up.
Like dude I’m already getting PB instakilled by buckshot as a RAV…
Or getting killed by cas as a rav, that’s never happened before.
aight guys the nerfs arent funny anymore u can stop now haha
the xenocord is threatening to go on strike
seriously like a good chunk of the community comprising one of the two major factions is probably gonna go to tg or just stop playing if things dont turn around soon, this shit is only declining further towards notfun
Thats not even a xeno nerf, just redistribution of power. Nor are details approved by morrow yet, but it’ll happen eventually, whether by that PR or another.
Maybe you just need a reminder what base rav’s like in current state - double empower and SKILL ISSUE showcase it pretty well I think. It’s not exactly “fun” for anyone but the rav player. Dunno why cope.