6 Likes
The harm’s the time of both parties, mostly the one proposing the changes.
Number changes without prior dev approval of some kind get auto locked. At least they used to, idk how it is now.
Even without that spending time going through all the numbers, testing, etc isnt worth it because its time wasted if it goes against the game vision of devs or they just disagree for whatever reason. Asking for permission for every single thing is similarly frustrating for both sides, compounded by devs often having 0 clue on game design and how changes affect the game or knowledge about CM itself in terms of what worked, what didnt, and how current things work.
The server’s chock full of unfinished projects, mechanics, caste, guns, whatever else going contrary to each other and getting added, removed, re-added, removed again, so it’s not like it’s even a reasonable process where good changes get approved and bad don’t.
Doesn’t help that actual good ideas to fix this (architects) got scrapped and the people who had the will and knowledge to work on the game got banned or left due to disagreements with server staff. Best you can do is check how reasonable current dev lead is and either fix things if they are, or give up and maybe come back if the game survives till the next dev lead.
tl;dr There’s a reason the server pop keeps going down and we’ve had over a year of no changes whatsoever despite a very questionable game state and open source.
2 Likes
4 tile knockback 1 second stun(changed from 3 and 2) for which you have to empower correctly first is just too weak of a kit for a T3. Sure the very good players would survive that, but xenos keep getting nerfed into that state of “well if you’re DP you’d still be able to kill a marine maybe”.
Shield nerfs are fine, though. If it was up to me, I’d remove the shield from it completely(among with nerfing the lunge escape).
As I said before, including in my experimental rav strain that didn’t get accepted: Ravager should be, in MOBA terms, a carry. It shouldn’t be very tanky, it shouldn’t be particularly escapy, but it should completely slaughter marines, particularly the ones who feel like shooting is for plebs.
2 Likes
Have you heard of a bruiser before? They exist, I promise.
Rav is a bruiser.
Bruisers are in every single moba. They aren’t new. Idk why you are acting like this is the first time a concept of a bruiser has come up.
Crusher: Tank
Rav: Bruiser
Boiler: Confused bastard → (Used to be long range …AKA SNIPER but now it’s not) ((Or mage. [[Long range caster]]
Prae: Confused bastard → (I do everything and nothing well.)
3 Likes
using empower correctly isnt exactly harder than doing anything else as a xeno so I dunno where this came from. As for overall difficulty it might need an extra second of empower duration padding to be even more forgiving and an actual live test of how much does the knockback affect ability to regain cooldown through slashing.
I don’t think you have the slightest clue what you’re talking about, if this is a weak xeno kit by your standards then you must be playing a different game https://streamable.com/1mwok3 https://streamable.com/7hhgqz https://streamable.com/lma2le
Last time this was tried it was called Veteran rav and it was a joke caste that even DP couldn’t achieve much on. You cannot have a “moba carry” in CM on the xeno side, because every marine is a ranged carry and you get blown up instantly if you try to play the game. To even have a chance at this working they’d need a runner sized sprite and runner-esque speed which… isn’t exactly fitting for a tier 3. Closest kit to what you describe currently would be zerker rav, and once again, if you think that’s a good, working kit, you’re playing a different game.
And yeah in case you somehow didnt realize this - caste following that design idea would only be playable to the 1% so contrary to what you’re trying to argue for here.
Contrary to the bruiser archetype ravs also have leap-to-safety abilities that allow them to instantly pull out of a mess they created for themselves, negating the entire risk of brawling against a ranged and kiting oriented opponent: You’re dangerous if you can get up close, but if you can’t close distance or if you can’t escape a bad play you’re in trouble. That’s the risk/reward; You have to make good assessments and not overextend.
And what these leap abilities on T3’s are doing is letting them make mistakes and instantly undo those mistakes by leaping across the screen to safety. Actually you see this almost across the board with xeno leap and pounce “attacks” - these are not usually being used by good players to engage, but actually are being used to escape and I think that’s an oversight by people implementing the abilities who did not consider that their le epic offensive move is more often better employed for survival.
Is anyone arguing that Ravager is not a strong caste now? I’m just saying that your nerfs would make it weaker in the parts that shouldn’t be made weaker. And would keep the cancerous parts still. And your videos are obviously of the current Ravager, not the nerfed by you version. You might as well post your Sentinel footage, would be more applicable.
So does reksai, voli has his speed, chogath has cc, all bruisers have a way to get out.
its not anything new.
2 Likes
Look, what may be acceptable in classic MOBAs is less acceptable in CM, because here it’s all about fighting creeps with even dumber AI.
Thats not a kit issue, its a number issue - pretty sure I went over this at some point itt or in the git PR. The entire risk is mitigated because it’s so easy to regain cooldown (slashing easy accessible stunned target twice), making it mostly irrelevant where, how and when you engage, because you’re gone by the time people can properly react and deal damage. This is why im changing the numbers to nerf shield amount and both reducing how easy the access is to the stunned marine aswell as prolonging the time the rav has to spend in an engage, so if it makes a mistake it can actually be punished for it. Hard to tell whether it’s enough without it being tested in practice though.
And its not contrary to the bruiser archetype either btw, they tend to have disengage built in, or are designed as all-in kits where you’re expected to win the teamfight or die trying (even then they have some minor/low reliable ways to disengage if in position to do so such a speed ups or w/e), but a single engage leading to killing 100 marines isn’t exactly what’d work in CM.
This is mostly what happens when said abilities don’t have the reward to compensate for the risk - vamp lurker a perfect example of this, where you’re better off keeping the pounce to escape rather than to engage because its offensive potential is laughable and it has enough speed to not require engaging with it.
Most common case of this that you’re probably refering to is when lurker doesn’t want to take the risk to pounce and “engages” off stealth - it’s not an issue by itself, because in these cases the damage the lurker can do is heavily reduced, you’ll usually see them slash twice and pounce away - little risk, little reward, no issue (or skill issue if it’s dancing around a marine that cant aim). It’s also a matter of having 2 engage abilities - invisibility technically counting as one. Old lurker’s design was superior precisely because it avoided this.
As explained above, pounces mostly become an issue when the kit doesn’t require them for offensive potential - base prae is a perfect example of this being a problem, as the dash does nothing aside from being a gap closer and you don’t require it to use your kit, so it’s usually being kept off cooldown as a free escape. In theory it makes base prae impossible to punish (not as bad in practice since people make mistakes or le funny sadar or w/e, but still bad design-wise, at least as far as CM gameplay goes).
As for other t3s which have dashes there’s only crusher and vanguard prae - neither really use it for disengaging to the point where it’d cause any issues - in the cases where vguard does it follows the same lurker pattern of low risk, low reward (though I dunno if I’d call that low risk in vguard case).
I think you can also count in charger here as a dasher of sorts, but that design is abhorrent with how it punishes the marine for correct counterplay.
And as for dash abilities in general, since we moved away from marines being expected to push, kits that require the xeno to camp around a corner and wait for a marine no longer work. Xenos either need speed to engage at will or an ability that helps them do so. Often both in varied/balanced degrees. The reliance’s made worse by grenades, SADAR or burst (m2c)/offscreen(sniper buffs n flak) which is a big reason why no one plays or does well on kits that do not have a dash or aren’t entirely ranged.
lol You could at least try not being blatantly wrong for once.
already went over this + you saw the proof how it works out (it doesn’t) yourself. I don’t see you playing zerker rav anyway, if it’s such a good design philosophy surely we’d see the strain be relevant outside of queen screech.
2 Likes
whats wrong with xenos having a way to get out, if marines push hard and follow they can still punish them.
Marines can get revived endlessly if they make a mistake, ravs have a chance to get a bit further from the trouble, they still are dead when they die, no coming back.
2 Likes
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it - not in the sense of “you should never have this ability”; just as long as it’s a balanced design choice with reasonable counterplay and we don’t hit extremes where it starts getting more stupid than fun to play against.
Most of the time if you’re a rav you burn your first pounce lunging at a marine if you empower enough. That also requires you to go deeper into their lines often, and robs you of the escape for a bit. So if you miss, or you don’t slash enough, or you fuck up, you’re kinda screwed.
As for this, there’s already so much stuff on marine side that has reached this point. Maybe we can start looking there before coming after one of the few remaining decently balanced xeno castes, but it’s doubtful anything significant marine side will get nerfed or even properly balanced in the foreseeable future.
What things do marines have that you believe lack reasonable counterplay?
Off the top of my head,
-Sniper.
People complain about warriors being able to lunge at edge of screen, when a sniper can instakill T1’s from god knows how far. Can take almost the entire health of most T3’s with certain ammo types and shots.
-Flak ammo
-.22 hornet rounds
Xenos rely on hit and run tactics, the slow from some munitions is so overbearing you rob them of the “run” part and they get melted, particularly T3’s and Queen. Only real counterplay is to not push I guess, but that’s not really much of a play
-Sadar
Can instagib most xenos, or permastun T3’s till you get gunned down to death, literally no counterplay if you get hit. Maybe unless you have a godly warden prae or something.
-Grenadier spec
Grenade spam and pounce-proof armor make it very difficult to fight for many castes short of queen, hedge rav, crusher or a good warrior that got a lucky pounce.
-Mortar
Practically infinite ammo, with a well coordinated team staying anywhere outside of caves is sometimes impossible. Closest thing to counterplay is dodging.
-CAS
Screenwide CAS runs that can also gib most xenos and permastun T3’s long enough to get gunned down to death. Has happened to me more than once as a rav. If you have OT ammo, it can sometimes rival an OB
-Stims
Powerful research stims that can now be acquired with literally no counterplay since xenos can’t drag xeno corpses anymore, and once marines get the stims the abilities of most castes are almost useless; speed stims hamper the necessity of xenos being faster than marines, since again they rely on hit and run. Antistun stims hamper the fact that most of ss13 combat revolves around stun, and it cripples most xeno abilities.
-Nuke
Nuke is meant to have counterplays like “map control” and “controlling both towers” and “killing IO’s”. In practice though, when marines need the nuke they can’t actually deploy it, because they can’t fulfill these requirements. The only time they can use it is when they have 100 people sitting in FOB the whole round and xenos don’t have the numbers to push or siege anything. At that point there is literally no counterplay, I’ve seen too many rounds where 90 marines sit on beach doing nothing for an hour instead of pushing to kill 11 xenos. It’s boring and a waste of everyone’s time.
You could say a lot of things I’ve mentioned have counterplays like “dodge” or whatever. Sure, sometimes you get time to dodge a mortar or CAS, or take cover from a sniper, but that still doesn’t mean it’s balanced in the long run. It would be the same as me telling you to “just push harder” when you complain about ravs pouncing away.
I know a lot of things I’ve listed above are also considered core game elements, and most marine mains are probably scoffing at anyone ever even bringing up the notion of nerfing any of these things. You might think it’s ridiculous, and that all of these things should remain untouched.
But that’s what a lot of players thought about many of the core xeno mechanics, like 2 larva, or lurker capping, or warrior lunge, or shields. But those things have and are being whittled away nonetheless.
While we’re at it, other things I personally think are unbalanced; maybe not without counterplay but still annoying:
-Baton slugs
This one’s just cope, they’re very annoying. Also doesn’t make sense why a marine would use nonlethal riot ammo against xenomorphs, or why ammo meant to be nonlethal on humans can stun, fling and lock abilities of most xenos.
-Buckshot
Too much damage or AP, not sure which. All I know is it melts through T3’s now, you can melt a rav with like 2 PB’s which is ironic considering xenos are the caste that rely on CQC to do damage :tro:
6 Likes
I’d like to say that the claim that snipers can instakill any T1 is false. The rounds that do enough damage to theoretically kill a T1 in one shot (Marksman rounds) have something like 50AP off the top of my head, which is a LOT. ( I believe more AP reduces the damage it does to castes with lower armor values.)
I play a lot of sniper. You cannot one shot most T1s. If they’re on decently low health? Sure, but then they’re either way out of their depth in the open (you’re asking for it) or they’re close enough to get to any kind of cover for the second or so of windup it takes. Runners negate a lot of the damage with their near-zero armor, and defenders have a lot of health. It takes about three aimed shots to down one from full health. (500 I think? And IIRC sniper does 210 damage per AIMED marksman round. Something like that… I might be dumb, I dont play much xeno)
As for CAS… yeah, it can be pretty deadly, though there is an incredibly loud windup. You can notice and dodge it quite easily unless you’re relegated to a chokepoint, which is uncommon. CAS cannot use OT ammunition, either, I think you’re thinking of the mortar.
I don’t see how needing to dodge CAS or the like is too unbalanced? I can play around it pretty easily, CAS isn’t that deadly if you have working headphones. I guess that if you were to run from offscreen where you couldn’t hear the CAS sound start and then get strafed, it would be unfair. I see how the sniper can be annoying, though. Being pummeled from offscreen with incendiary, flak and marksman rounds might get frustrating. Then again, there’s only one of them, and they’re a powerful specialist - they’re meant to be targeted. Plus, you can just retreat into a more close quarters environment like the caves - assuming there’s a hivelord.
1 Like
Well said. Here’s my take:
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Sniper range nerf needed to coincide with boiler range reduction, mby remove IFF unless their skill is active? Noone likes fighting from off screen and they can’t be reached with in an unga ball.
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Flak / Hornet - sounds like xenos have been forced to use teamplay for every action now (one larva per cap + woy nerfs) increasing the skill floor. There should always be a defender/crusher/rav leading the attack to soak up the first bullets and another for retreat - if xenos are caught out alone, they’re nigh guarantied to be slaughtered in general
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Sadar has to risk overextending and has limited ammo, long reload, stuns allies with backblast if too close, counterplay is stay with your fucking team and pray they attack now that SADAR is unloaded
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GL spec - Slash feet / head, pay attention to their ammo use, and coordinate multi stage attacks (beware OT nades)
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Mortar - gives bravoids something to contribute to frontline while waiting for siege. A nessesary evil. counterplay: 3 burrower FOB raid specifically for mortar + Tcom
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CAS - I am a PO enjoyer, but what I’ve seen of the Gau buff seems busted, before this it was much more balanced + requires teamplay from ground forces - IE your only counterplay is to fuck up whoever is coordinating
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Stims: Xeno bodies should despawn “melt into unusable goop” after a timer now that they can’t be dragged
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Nuke is a win more item - replacing it with some kind of RP educed Admin approved support element would be infinitely better.
Ideas I’ve seen that’d be interesting / my additions: HighCom sends a Tank due to WY funding,
WY gives a squad for a named Xeno retrieval / Hivecore Chemical sample (see lore),
Dutches Duzen for Preds,
UPP/CLF Survivor retrieval - negotiations to help operation
Edit below
- Baton slugs - good and realistically used vs *hostile CLF/UPP survs, a funny niche ammo and high risk of FF stuns. Arguably OP if GL Spec takes only baton slugs and gives all his points worth of HE to ungoids, but that ain’t the meta
- Buckshot buff - haven’t gotten to play since that update, it sounds busted to the point of encouraging shotgunner suicide charges. Buck not having great AP - shredding T1s/2s that lack armor felt right.
Compensatory change idea for buck: have it lower armor value for a short time on hit like Holo rounds. So consecutive PBs are required for real damage.
1 Like
I am almost certain that is not how AP works. It’s just that AP ammo typically has lower damage value than regular ammo.
Dude runners are so vulnerable to sniper, you lose most of your health in one hit. Usually you can run to cover due to your speed but if you actually get hit you do not “negate a lot of the damage”
2 Likes
Each xeno has an armor value that reduces incoming damage
Each ammo has an armor penetration value that can pierce through some of the armor
If you examine a weapon it’ll have armor values from 0 to 50, the most relevant are 0 and 25 (which covers every caste I think except defender/crusher).
AP ammo does lower overall damage but will apply more of that damage to higher armored xenos
So normal ammo will be like
100 damage to armor 0, 50dmg to armor 20, and 10dmg to armor 50
AP ammo will be like
50 damage to armor 0, 50 dmg to armor 20, 40 dmg to armor 50
Depending on how much penetration the ammo has. What that means is that AP ammo is less effective against unarmored xenos because it has lower max damage application, and is more effective against heavily armored xenos because its damage isn’t reduced.
Runner: 230 hp, armor 0
Defender 500 hp, armor 35
M42A w/Marksman (AP ammo)
Runner = 4 hits to kill
Defender = 8 hits to kill
M42A w/Flak:
Runner = 5 hits to kill
Defender = 27 hits to kill
M41 Mk2 w/AP ammo
Runner = 7 hits to kill
Defender = 16 hits to kill
M41 Mk2 w/regular ammo
Runner = 6 hits to kill
Defender = 30 hits to kill
So you can see how AP helps kill armored stuff a lot faster while being a little bit worse for non-armored stuff.
4 Likes
Agree with a lot of this, and there’s definitely a few plays you suggested here I might try sometime;
this sadly will probably not happen, since devs removed the ability to drag bodies explicitly because they want to overhaul this aspect of the game and make a system that relies on points acquired from bodies or something. It’s more or less handholding to ensure marines collect the bodies no matter what, so making bodies melt or anything would just defeat that purpose. Sadly despite concerns over research stims and the like being brought up regarding that particular pr, nobody really seemed to care about the collateral implications of taking that away from xenos, so it is what it is.
This is one thing I wouldn’t really consider a counterplay; I don’t wanna bank on praying to keep me from being taken out of the round for 2 hours from a single click.
And if marines are half-decent and actually follow up on a landed SADAR shot, the amount of sheer firepower brought down to bear in your direction after you’re stunned would melt most castes that try to push anyways, so nobody usually does. Short of a queen screech or a crusher/rav risking overextension to tank for you, there isn’t much that can be done.
That’s assuming you are a T3 and tank the initial blast; I’ve seen too many xenos just get instagibbed by SADAR with literally zero counterplay.
SADAR can also sometimes have a loader, and (I think, uncertain) get more ammo made or delivered? Backblast isn’t really a huge issue, hell front blast isn’t an issue. If you blow up 6 marines as SADAR and kill a T3 in the process, that’s a good shot. The marines can be revived, the crusher cannot. There is no death more honorable as a marine than getting blown up by SADAR to get a xeno killed :tro:
It’s not horrendously unbalanced, it’s just another one of many offscreen attacks marines have with little counterplay outside of dodging. And silent CAS can be an issue quite often, I’ve been deleted by CAS without warning or sound on numerous occasions.
Lots of the stuff in the list also kind of work congruently to lead to minimal counterplay.
For example, I think one of the worst ones was a Chances round few days ago when marines were under siege; DP queen, good T3’s boilers, all couldn’t break FOB after an hour of sieging because marines had greater numbers, infinite mortar and CAS, and stims. It got to the point where there was a screenwide moat of fire around the FOB. Queen built the core right next to FOB so we could siege without being bombed, but even that didn’t help. You can only dodge so much, after that there isn’t much you can do to counter other than fallback, which also didn’t work because marines didn’t push after.
Point is there’s lots of things that could use rework/rebalance on marine side, but it’s unlikely anything will be done to harm marines in near future the way things are headed.
The only thing they’re removing for marines is the M2C, which is a marine buff if anything lol
2 Likes