What's with all the xeno overhauls lately?

General Discussion
101

I just want to point out that statements asserting that “X Caste can be killed by Y shotgun shots” or anything akin are, while technically true, not completely indicative of the reality of the game.

If I spawn a Ravenger in an offline server and shoot it four times with a PB buckshot shotgun to kill it, that is not at all true of how strong a Ravenger is when controlled by a living player when the live player generally is trying to avoid dying and will use their abilities to do so.

I could kill the average elite Runner in half a dozen rifles rounds, but actually landing those shots is another thing.

3 Likes
102

Impaler got canned, it’s so fucking over xenobros.

3 Likes
103

And they won’t stop coming! Let’s pretend for a second lurker invis pushing is a real problem and not a skill issue (you can move sideways, you can PB the pushing lurker, your fellow marines can deal with lurker because it’s a risky move). Is this a valid solution to a problem? It makes playing lurker more annoying if anything. Imagine, for example, you bump into invisible scout. Or you miss your pounce (you can miss your pounce even on sprite click if target moves) and bump into marines by accident. If you survive, good luck waiting for CD that already lasts ages.

But again, no fucking way it’s «super cheesy». It’s only cheesy if you get pushed all the way to xeno lines, but that is a major skill issue. You didn’t notice lurker behind you, you didn’t try to move, you didn’t try to shoot. But mostly pushing is only way to deal with groups as a lurker: you push one of marines a bit and immediately pounce, so now you have an extra second to slash before you get PBed into oblivion. I bet nothing is going to be done to compensate this.

But let’s pretend it’s a legitimate problem again. Is there no better solutions? Just forbid lurker from pushing when invis, for example. At least this way you are not going to lose invisibility. Or make invis pushing slower as a middle ground. But fuck no, just like with the node placement beneath walls, we gotta make the game more annoying for xenos just to handhold marines.

6 Likes
104

It kinda is lame cheese.

Could just make it lose collision and it’d be better for both sides rather than griefing lurkers that accidentally bump into someone.
Definitely one of the worst PRs in CM history with how it handles the problem.

6 Likes
105

I made a PR feedback form but I’m not sure if maintainers actually read those so I’ll post my idea here too. I think it would be better if lurker simply entered a “semi-invisible” state if they bump into someone. What I mean by this is that their opacity would increase a bunch, so that they’re easy to spot, but they would still technically have invis active so they would be able to pounce and would still have higher movement speed.
Losing invis (and therefore your ability to pounce enemies and extra move speed) because you accidentally bumped into someone sounds really annoying so I think it would be better this way.

5 Likes
106

You have to think strategically now. A corner case cheese nerf to a caste that’s a bit on the low risk side may be annoying, but what’s good about it that it’s probably delaying even more substantial nerfs for what may be even a week if we’re lucky. So if we’re in the era of weekly xeno nerfs, until we reach the rock bottom, this is kinda acceptable.

What’s more annoying is that the DORs rav nerf seems to be getting accepted too. So it’s gonna be the second caste killed by him(more like crippled, but ugh). And then he’s aiming for neutering the crusher too. Of course he has equally stupid xeno buffing ideas, but those are always easy to ignore\stop.

2 Likes
107

Are we making major balance decisions based off what is considered “cheesy” now?
Cause I’ll say right now, getting hacked to death by an invisible scout with a fireaxe is also pretty “cheesy”. You’d think a xeno would notice after the first hit.
Getting bodyblocked by someone as a queen is pretty fucking “cheesy”. I think chi couldn’t have said it better:

"5’4 marine bodyblocks the 20 ft queen? TOTALLY FINE

8ft lurker shoves the 5’4 marine? UNCLOAK HE! NOT OKAY! BAN HIM!"

7 Likes
108

And merged despite all the concerns and the fact that clearly better solutions were suggested. Outstanding.

2 Likes
109

A Lurker having to expose itself to push a marine out of position feels justified.

@ThiccFucc lets be slightly fair, only a single marine in the game has the possibility of being a scout spec and using cloak to attack aliens in melee, lets also not forget using melee to attack a xeno is a very risky endeavour. Comparably there can be many Lurkers.

1 Like
110

It’s not about exposing themselves, it’s about losing the ability to pounce people as well as your extra movement speed you get while invisible. It’s why my suggestion was to have a semi-invis state where you’re easier to see but still count as invisible for the purpose of abilities. Other people suggested just not letting invis lurker push people which would work too.

I don’t think invis pushing is even that common of a tactic, it feels like the main impact of this will be punishing lurkers who accidentally bump into someone.

6 Likes
111

Not that devs generally care or read feedback (note the removal of any sort of discord thread feedback system while also preventing any sort of opinions on github).

However, base lurker is a literal cheese caste(not that cheese is inherently bad or unwanted imo), but that’s all it has going for it(at least before invis changes.) It has slower attack speed(iirc) and bad tackle chances, which makes non-pounce captures impossible without insane rng. It has pretty average attack damage(coupled with slow attack speed. Also crippling strike is only a 1.2x increase with a slash reset, which doesn’t amount to that much), and it has no real abilities outside of cloaking(which has now been made useless for anything other than pouncing), and a super long stun(which has been deemed cheesy and op). It does nothing other than haha stun and then walk away.

If you remove cheese from base lurker, it becomes nothing. At least give lurker something in compensation or change invis pr so it doesn’t negate non-cheese approaches to combat.

5 Likes
112

Yes. Lets be fair and recognize that being pushed and/or blocked by invisible mobs is equally annoying for both sides.

I don’t see how the amount of [insert unfun thing] makes it any less unfun to die to [insert unfun thing again].

Yeah, had it not affected normal lurker gameplay. Its immediately noticeable even off playing a single round - https://streamable.com/avsb0q and in the second one had I been one tile to the left I coulda been decloaked if he moved to the right instead of stepping into a marine https://streamable.com/3xgdq8 its not exactly uncommon for people to randomly and suddenly move somewhere like this and if you get unlucky you just get decloaked and die on the spot.

An extremely bad solution to a simple problem. Honestly surprising it wasn’t PR’d under anonymous John Doe and that people really wanna defend it outside of anonymous XX or numbered larvae but it is what it is.

explorer_ 23_07_12(4490)
explorer_ 23_07_12(4490)1089×465 42 KB

Its xover. Rav is dead and unplayable. If you actually study the date you’ll notice this happened before knockback nerf was reverted.
Almost as xover as hedge losing 10 dmg but being able to actually slash more than once per round aswell as getting more spike damage resulting in higher dmg potential overall. Though I’ve gotta hand it to you that the hedge one aint yours, despite being similar in quality.

2 Likes
113

I think you should spend a few rounds watching melee scouts.

I’ve seen them rack up a ridiculously high body count just by lurking and axing a xeno who only barely made it to cover after an attack, sometimes literally right in the middle of a pack of other xenos because they’re hard as fuck to spot if you don’t notice their outline using xeno thermal vision from behind a wall.

Maybe I’m just dogshit, but I especially have a bad time spotting an invisible scout so being melee’d be an attacker I can’t see at all means my only option is to haul ass and hope I lose them.

3 Likes
114

I guess I am really just dogshit at scout lmao

3 Likes
115

Sorry buddy, every action movie needs its cannon fodder.

2 Likes
116

How the CO looks at me during the evac of the frontline:

:saluting_face:

3 Likes
117

Oh my god they didn’t even testmerge, they just straight up fucking merged it
LOL

Seriously morrow what the fuck

Lurkers pushing marines is not their primary ability, nor is it what cloak is used for. Usually on the offchance I try to push someone while cloaked, they shoot me after 3 tiles, or they sidestep and I go running into fire.

Cloaking as a lurker is the only way to stun people when you pounce them.

**Which is literally like the core mechanic this caste requires for combat. **

You know how often I miss cloaked pounces and graze against the marine? Now instead of getting a chance to pounce again after the obscenely long cooldown or running away, you just fucking die.

Once again a case of someone who doesn’t play xeno trying to nerf a caste to solve a nonissue (or relatively minute issue at most if you wanna be nitpicky) and absolutely fucking over a chunk of the playerbase in the process.

Me getting banned for a month after commenting :1984:

damn I haven’t written a copypasta in a bit, but *cracks knuckles here goes I guess

Xenos don’t get buffs anymore. In fact they don’t get anything added to them. Devs don’t “develop” jackshit for xenos anymore, they just take things away and make what we do have unplayable. And the deflective answer to this is “erm xeno nuke” which is just going to be a handful of siege castes, cause everyone knows sieging is the most fun part of the game for xenos. Marine nuke forces xenos to siege, xeno nuke also forces xenos to siege. Can’t wait looking forward to it! But if you bring THAT issue up, you get the answer “erm asymmetrical game”. We’re steadily moving towards making every round fucking Whiskey Outpost, the only difference is it’s hardcore mode for the XENOS.

The only person who was developing new stuff for xenos was VOX, and they’re gone now since the strain they poured their heart into for four years just got canned by morrow for no good reason.
Literally the only new thing xenos have gotten I can think of right now is a new hugger strain. Not to shit on it, it’s really fucking cool, but the fact that that’s the ONLY new thing we’ve gotten that isn’t a nerf in idk how long says something. It’s also the only thing that morrow approved because it doesn’t actually have any core impact on gameplay.

2 Likes
118

If you are in a position where a missed pounce results in your death, you were likely pouncing into a highly dangerous situation to start with. A missed pounce still confers you the capability to withdraw and retreat.

@GoldenDarkness
In both of your videos you still were able to disengage and remain safe. Perhaps the developers can investigate reducing the cloak cooldown if you lose it due to bumping into someone to slightly lessen the punishment.

Also, the very few scout players that aggressively use their cloak for offensive actions rarely will try to body block xenos, since that exposes them and gets them killed. They’ll usually do a combination of clearing backline weeds, recover dead bodies and try to finish off wounded xenos.

Complaining of a cloaked scout killing a half dead xeno is equilivant of complaining of a burrower or lurker killing/capping a marine in some forgotten backline. The onos is on the victim faction to ascertain that this is occurring and take steps to avoid it (for marines don’t be alone, for xenos be careful of where you rest). If no one is noticing a scout is executing almost dead xenos, then that’s not really a balance issue.

1 Like
119

If no one notices a lurker pushing marines then that’s not really a balance issue. A scout killing resting xenos is far more severe and punishing to players, idk why devs concerned themselves with “balancing” this lurker “issue” before balancing scout.

Besides, once again if we’re going off morrow’s logic none of what you said makes fireaxe scout less “cheesy”. Scout is just one example of countless unbalanced things marine-side. But not a single one of those is on morrow’s shit list.

3 Likes
120

If you are in a position where a missed pounce results in your death, you were likely pouncing into a highly dangerous situation to start with.

No, I just made the mistake of pouncing on tryhard unga #3422345 who proceeded to quickdraw his shotgun and pointblank me, then when I try to run hits me with a revolver round to stagger and slow me then mow me down at his leisure.

and I know. ‘Skill issue’, but believing that you only die because of poor decision making is a gross simplification of how some players are. Its a dangerous situation just to exist near some people, but that doesn’t mean I can just not. They still need to be fought like all the others.

Complaining of a cloaked scout killing a half dead xeno is equilivant of complaining of a burrower or lurker killing/capping a marine in some forgotten backline. The onos is on the victim faction to ascertain that this is occurring and take steps to avoid it (for marines don’t be alone, for xenos be careful of where you rest). If no one is noticing a scout is executing almost dead xenos, then that’s not really a balance issue.

Oh shit, I didn’t realize that in the alien movie we watched a ship full of xenos being stalked and hunted by a scout marine with a fireaxe.

There’s absolutely something to be said for ‘watch where you rest’ but you’re being entirely unreasonable if your expectation is ‘if you’re not hiding in a walled up room twenty screens from the frontline you have no grounds to complain when some invisible fuck face sneaks up on you.’ because at least when some invisible fuckface (Lurker) sneaks up on a marine, he probably actually exposed himself and wasn’t just unlucky enough to not see the extremely see through outline of his stalker.

3 Likes