I’m curious to talk about balance of xeno attacks, so high hour xeno players, please post your hours, thoughts & opinions.
I have X main questions:
- Should “small looking” T2 be able to Frac?
- Should Xenos be allowed to target limbs?
Number 1:
As a Protag Marine player, I often find myself getting stunned by lurkers, drones, and other xenos that visually appear to be the same size as the “Drone.”
Xenos like Lurkers, and so on do seem more “ambush” type xenos, and maybe not big and strong like Warriors, they aren’t as weak as a runner nor lesser drone.
If a sentinel or something gets the drop on me, yeah, fuck me up, cause bleeding, and kill me if marines don’t push you off of me. That’s fair.
But… should these xenos be able to fracture bones?
I do want to consider that xenos (should) have 20~30 players facing 80~120 players.
Xenos win by attrition and slowly wearing marines down through fractures, marines running out of ammo, and supplies.
As a marine player, in my head I justify “oh yeah, a crusher, hell yeah, he’ll definitely give me a frac or two.”
But a lurker, I find it difficult to justify in my monkey brain.
In real life, yeah humans are pretty fragile and can break easily, especially when facing a 6~8 foot tall insect.
So I am curious about your thoughts on this subject of limiting what xenos can frac to only the most formidable xenos.
Number 2:
By targeting the chest as a xeno, you are, to my knowledge objectively wrong because this area does the least damage.
Therefore, all the “good” xenos target hands and feet. Except when facing someone they want to decapitate in which case they aim for the head.
As smart as this is from a gameplay perspective, I can’t picture a scenario where this beast is trying to get my toes.
I’m sure you can extrapolate this to a human-sized xeno like the drone doing the same in the heat of combat.
We already have intents, so a possible proposal of difference is help mode is still “basic melee attack” where you want to hurt the player, and mess him up.
Disarm still can disarm.
Grab grabs and drags.
Then for harm intent that could be your “I want to crit, and potentially decapitate.” This will let you choose whether or not you want to decapitate marines or cause other “extreme” damage.
For marines, unless they’re engaging in HVH, targeting limbs just opens up opportunities to fuck over your friends by aiming at places where his armor isn’t as it to my knowledge doesn’t affect xenos where you aim.
So to make the armor values matter more “directly” and to prevent “you are making an objectively incorrect decision by targeting chest”, should limb targeting be removed for xenos?
Xeno players, please let me know what you think.
I am hoping that good/high hour xeno players chime in.
Obviously no one wants to nerf their skills, so I am asking what you think in general, and some thoughts I have as a marine.
This would be a big sweeping balance change, but I’m curious on what you think about it.