Why is the human team so bad?

[floodbud]

Actually, Tremulous is very balanced.  No one has an advantage.  If one player is better than another, he will win every time, regardless of team.  I have played many, many times and the better players always, always win.  If both teams are very evenly matched, winning will be by confidence and chance alone.

I must admit that humans are built very well for base camping though, which gives neither team much of an edge.

Overall Tremulous is very well balanced and put together.  Hail the programmers who thought out their idea before putting it together.  And with things like tjw's admin mod, it is very easy to keep the game fun and even.
___________________
Floodbud.  Owner.

[Henners]

Floodbud. Owner of necromantic skills

[sleekslacker]

When a guy revives an old thread he's a thread necro.
But if he posts a new thread about the same topic you guys 'kill' him for 'not using the search button'.

:sigh:

and now you will all call me a whiner. Whatever.


IMHO the game is not really balanced. It's fair in a sense that each team has certain advantage when they reach certain stages.

Human S1 weaker than Alien S1

Human S2 stronger than Alien S2 ( Pulser + flamer team can own any alien )

Human S3 weaker than Alien S3 ( Tyrants kill non BS human too easily. But actually the balance is very small tipping to human alien side in this stage, since they have the luci. )

I suggest that luci radius should decrease with distance ( as has been suggested before I believe ) or the big ball luci should be removed altogether, leaving the quick luci bursts in-game. Tyrants should need 3 strikes against an armor + helmet human (I am not sure really how many it takes now.. 2 ? ). Dretch ground headbite will be removed in 1.2.0 so I guess that will make S1 a bit more balanced. Oh yes pounce damage is too much I think.   Maybe decrese it to 90 dmg per attack so that it doesn't kill instantly.

edited.. damned '<' character is buggy

[shadow_archmagi]

Ground headbites are just silly. You expect me to believe this thing that doesn't go past my knees can hit my head without jumping? Of course, it could just as easily be a crotchbite, which would be just as deadly as a headbite.

It all depends on who is playing S3. Generally, a Tyrant>Bsuit. But a skilled player who knows how to dance and dodge the tyrants attacks can often gun that thing down before it gets its 3rd hit in.

Unarmored humans die in one hit.

[janev]

Remember that trem needs to be balanced for teamgames. Quite frankly I'm not convinced that nerfing the goon or tyrant is the way to go. Early on it felt like the aliens had all the advantages stacked in their favour(due to lack of teamplay) but now I'm beginning to think a team of humans working together will obliterate any alien team that stands against them. That will imo be dubbly true in 1.2 with the removal of the ground headbite. The dretch will need some serious hp/speed boosting if it's going to stand any chance at all vs competent players.

@sleekslacker "md vs goon", both have instagib vs basic offensive class.

[Mispeled]

The dretch headbite is not that major of an issue. Only extremely skilled players can really pull it off; they'll find some other way to get kills.

[temple]

The dretch headbite is not that major of an issue. Only extremely skilled players can really pull it off; they'll find some other way to get kills.

I agree but anyone can do it.

Tremulous isn't a game where you play one team forever.  I play aliens and ground headbite all the time.  I play humans and kill aliens before they headbite me all the time.

[sleekslacker]

The dretch headbite is not that major of an issue. Only extremely skilled players can really pull it off; they'll find some other way to get kills.

I'm 'extremely skilled' then. cool !

[Mantra]

Dretches are already under powered with unlag. There is no need to remove ground headbite just because people don't want to play with a bit more sound and don't want to pay attention to the game.
Hell with unlag, wall to wall jumping is pretty much useless with unlag, I get gunned down in 3 seconds top by even noobs.

The high damage from the dretch is taken back by its hp. The only thing that should, personally, be nerfed, is goon should be moved to s2. This would force people to actually learn more then pounce chomp pounce pounce chomp. Maybe, just maybe, we'll see more people learning how to play with lisks and maras, which trem seriously lacks right now. Well, I supose bloody and anger are the most prominent reason everyon uses goon now a day.

Groudn headshot isin't too bad anyway, so far, whats the most annoying thing is teh goon easy kill rate and ceiling headshots. Ceilling headbites, are, personally, much worse then ground headbites.

[temple]

The high damage from the dretch is taken back by its hp. The only thing that should, personally, be nerfed, is goon should be moved to s2. This would force people to actually learn more then pounce chomp pounce pounce chomp. Maybe, just maybe, we'll see more people learning how to play with lisks and maras, which trem seriously lacks right now. Well, I supose bloody and anger are the most prominent reason everyone uses goon now a day.

That's silly.  Fixing humans doesn't require nerfing aliens.  

Putting goons at s2 is just silly.  Good players with goons exploit weak humans players.  Take 2 decent humans with anything other than a rifle and they can chase off or kill any goon.  

Most people never seen Bloody or Anger play and I only played with them occasionally when I first started.  If you stay in your base, they will burn their evos trying to rush and you can size them up a lot better.   It isn't the goon or the goon user, its the begineers they are pitted against.  Which that problem could be solved using my suggestions about weapons instead of nerfing goons.

[Mantra]

Good people with goons can still rape expert humans if they're s1. By nerfing goons to s2, you'll force more diversity into most alien players, that just dretch until goon then rape humans.
Most people say that goons are useless at human s2, but I've found that:
goon vs s1

Goon can plow through 5 people until he gets taken down, sometimes more, sometimes less. Usually at least 1is taken down. That is taken you fight in a relatively small space where all the humans can't shoot the goon at once.

Goon vs s2

Goon can fight off 1 human before he usually dies, that is, if the fight is alone. Some circomstences happen that the goon can take down 2 human, but thats usually a matter of lack of skill from humans or an over powering level of skill from the goon. That being said. Goons are of equal ppower to an helmeted human with a shotgun, and even pulse, though the pulse seems to appear to be slightly more powerful then the goon.
This would tend to make it seems as though the goon is more of a stage 2 class, since its on par with the power of an helmeted human.


Your idea with the human weapons just confuses me, and I'm sure it would confuse the newer player even more. Right now the weapons are pretty straight forward and easy to handle.

What they're try8ing to deal with, is the newer idiot members that don't tend to READ the manual.

[kozak6]

What they're try8ing to deal with, is the newer idiot members that don't tend to READ the manual.

Have you read the manual?  Seriously?

[Huscarl]

Kozak6: In the 7 months I've played Tremulous I've only encountered four players that have asked how to get a new weapon.  That suggests to me that a healthy portion of new players take the necessary five minutes to read the manual.

Re: the TremLeague matches: I don't think there was more than one game where the human team managed a win; but you'll have to confirm that with Smokey.



I wholeheartedly agree with Temple's initial stament about the weapons and new players in general.

I don't believe that turrets breed weak players.  I believe weak players are weak players due to inexperience, and I don't see how getting dretch'd every 5 seconds would improve a player's confidence level and skill.  Of course some players are just defective and beyond all hope; that's why we have "/callvote kick".

I have personally taken an S1 Dragoon and led my feeder-team (where litterally everyone had 0 kills except two players, who had KS'd one kill each) to victory, even though the humans were S3 inside 5 minutes.  I spent the next 20 minutes picking off battlesuits and cursing my team.  The only saving grace was that there was a granger who was kind enough to heed my advice and spammed eggs and was patien enough to rebuild the base numerous times.

Yes, I died a lot.  The human players weren't dumb, they were established.  Many I had played with before on previous occassions so they knew my moves.  But for every time I died, I was able to get away two times previous and heal.  I always had evo to use and I fought those humans to a stand-still, and then was finally able to destroy their base at SD.  And I'm really not that hot of a player.  I've just been around the block a few times.

Now for a serious player, I watched BodyOrgan hold off an ENTIRE TEAM of established human players with his Tyrant while -his- team fed.  He had 50+ kills, and the next on the alien killboard had like 6 after some 20 minutes of gameplay.  He drove those humans to camp half the time, and only died when he was breaking into a group of 5 or 6 bsuits (all the humans were bsuits, that's how much the aliens were feeding).  That match ended up being a draw since the humans had about four players who camped the base with chainguns and whutnot while the rest were always attacking.

Why was this able to happen?  Because the humans were always bringing LCannon and flamers; not nearly enough shotguns, chainguns, lasguns and pulserifles to deal with the bigger stuff.  I desperately think the human weapons need to be adjusted with, at the minimum, a brief explaination of the weapon's intent and which enemies it is considered most effective against.  The LCannon should also come with a freaking huge warning label.

*CAUTION:   DO NOT USE THIS DEVICE AROUND HUMAN STRUCTURES; MISSUSE OF THIS DEVICE MAY CAUSE YOU TO BE BANNED FROM THE SERVER!*

[kozak6]

Kozak6: In the 7 months I've played Tremulous I've only encountered four players that have asked how to get a new weapon.  That suggests to me that a healthy portion of new players take the necessary five minutes to read the manual.

I suppose that would be a better point if the manual actually told you how to get a better weapon.

All it currently says is:

As credits are earned, humans may sell their old upgrades and purchase new ones at an Armoury structure.

That's it.  It needs to specifically point out that you need to sell the rifle.

[shadow_archmagi]

yes. It confused me at first too. Most games have you autosell. You might also want to point out that it has a 100% conversation rate, so you arnt losing money when you sell stuff back. Which is good for meee!

[janev]

Good people with goons can still rape expert humans if they're s1

That good player may not get a goon vs expert riflemen  .  

Goon can fight off 1 human before he usually dies, that is, if the fight is alone.

Please don't make balance suggestions based on 1v1 fights

Putting goons at s2 is just silly

+1

ake 2 decent humans with anything other than a rifle and they can chase off or kill any goon.

Not any goon.

The only thing that should, personally, be nerfed, is goon should be moved to s2.

Think of what it would do to s1 balance... Atm there are only a handful of player who can use marauder effectively vs clustered humans and if you add to that skill on the human team you will see that humans win every game :roll:

[Stof]

Think of what it would do to s1 balance... Atm there are only a handful of player who can use marauder effectively vs clustered humans and if you add to that skill on the human team you will see that humans win every game :roll:

Of course, who would bother to train in the mara usage when you can take a goon and own any stage 1 human easily for one more evo point

Move the goon to s2 and you'll see a LOT more skill in mara and basi on the servers after some time.

[shadow_archmagi]

Yeh. Move goon to s2, since humans don't get anything good at S1 anyway. Without helmets, its far too easy to lose over 100 creds worth of equipment without getting a single kill first. I never dare to use anything but a shotgun, for fear of the headbite robbing me of my nice chainfun.

[janev]

Of course, who would bother to train in the mara usage when you can take a goon and own any stage 1 human easily for one more evo point

Move the goon to s2 and you'll see a LOT more skill in mara and basi on the servers after some time.

Maybe... but imho if you take away the goon you take away the aliens ability to take the humans on head on is s1. Basi well that is almost useless against 2 decent humans Marauder well in the hands of the few select it is devastating.... In the hands of the rest of us it is 2 evo points down the drain :cry:. *shrugs* It might be worth a try to see how it works out...My guess is that it would make humans > aliens in s1.

[Stof]

Aliens already have practicaly zero chance of taking on a camping human base unless they have Tyrants and Adv Goons. Moving the Goon to stage 2 wouldn't change that too much

But I agree that it probably isn't the best solution. And anyway, we still have to see how it'll turn out in Trem 1.2.0

Anyway, one possible solution would be to give the humans a stage 1 light helmet that doesn't give radar and which doesn't protect as much as the real thing. Say, it could give 50% damage protection for example. It would be very cheap though, along the lines of 30 credits at best.

[tuple]

How nice that everyone is deciding what the devs spend their time coding
Perhaps you all could play on TJW's server, the one where
"they nerfed the aliens like crazy" and where modifications are made to help the game, instead of coming in here with

words words words

You could actually contribute by playing on a dev's server and helping to test changes to gameplay.  Not test on a per match basis really, but overall.  Help add to the stats that actually determine if the game is more balanced or not, not these anecdotal "I once".

Of course, bitching about the game in forums is more fun I guess.

[janev]

I have played there tuple

[tuple]

I have played there tuple

So have I.  Honestly though, I need to play there more.  Best server methinks.  Good admins, good atmosphere, challenging.  I need to start spending more time there.

[Stof]

I would play on tjw server when he'll stop beeing foolish and host his server where it really matters : somewhere in europe

[daenyth]

Last I heard from tjw and kev, ground headbite won't be gone in 1.2. (And is present on tjw's server) I don't know where the rumors start up, but I tend to trust what the devs say rather than random people on the forums.

In order to remove ground headbite, you would need to drastically reduce the range of dretch's attack.

[Mantra]

Kozak: Before playing a game, I usually read the manual as well as most guides I can find on forums around the subject. This includes all the guides found on this forum(Not counting the mapping guide >.>)

janev:
1v1 is the best way to find the power to power ratio between 2 units/class. Of course 2-3 shotguns can take out a goon, but then you're saying that a goon is 2 to 3 times stronger then 1 shotgun, thus brings in the balance issues. Fightign 1v1, a chainsuit can win vs most rant, and a rant can win vs most chainsuits, those are pretty equal. So are, as I stated, goons and anyone with s2 weaponry.

I've seen existantial risk take down a group of 4 hummies, most armed with shotguns, with more then half his hp left. If we move goon to s2, like it should, then that means people will take more time into learning how to handle the other aliens, like they should. Right now they're pretty useless, since getting a goon then raping is usually easier and faster. At the beginning, yes, humans would be back in shape and maybe win more then 1/2 the games, but after a while, you'll see less camping from humans, and more skills from the aliens.

Tuple: I stoped playing on tjw's server much since he released unlag. I've only been on sparingly to check a few things out, and I've given him my thought on most of what he changed. unlag makes dretches and lisk useless if there is any clear line of sight between the alien and human and most of the time, high pinging humans shoot you half down the other corridor, which is annoying. Further more, it seems to make all the high pingers flucker to the said unlagged server, which is even more annoying.

[janev]

1v1 is the best way to find the power to power ratio between 2 units/class. Of course 2-3 shotguns can take out a goon, but then you're saying that a goon is 2 to 3 times stronger then 1 shotgun, thus brings in the balance issues. Fightign 1v1, a chainsuit can win vs most rant, and a rant can win vs most chainsuits, those are pretty equal. So are, as I stated, goons and anyone with s2 weaponry.

Well you have to take into account that the human team is ranged... So 1v1 balance is not the same thing as 5v5 balance or 8v8 balance

I've seen existantial risk take down a group of 4 hummies, most armed with shotguns, with more then half his hp left.

I've taken out 2 tyrants and an adv goon with saw and walked away with over 50% hp left... Does that mean tyrants should be boosted?

[tuple]

Mantra: you do realize that unlagged is in SVN and so will be a standard part of 1.2, right?  Time to get used to it.

[Mantra]

I'm aware unlag willo be in default for trem 1.2, and I find it sad  
Now noobs will never learn what lag means and what most of us, whove been playing for a while, learned by ourselves with hours and hours on end of practice. Leading was a skill, now it is no more  

I've taken out 2 tyrants and an adv goon with saw and walked away with over 50% hp left... Does that mean tyrants should be boosted?

We've all had strokes of good luck. I doubt you can pull that off everyday. On the other hand, I've seen risk own groups multiple times in a row.
By the way, unlag+500 ping+saw=OVERPOWERED!
Well, with or without unlag, its overpowered  

[temple]

janev:
1v1 is the best way to find the power to power ratio between 2 units/class. Of course 2-3 shotguns can take out a goon, but then you're saying that a goon is 2 to 3 times stronger then 1 shotgun, thus brings in the balance issues. Fightign 1v1, a chainsuit can win vs most rant, and a rant can win vs most chainsuits, those are pretty equal. So are, as I stated, goons and anyone with s2 weaponry.

That's complete bullshit.  A shotgun cost 150 credits, which is less that the credit reward (bounty)for killing a dretch.  The bounty for a dragoon is 500 credits.  I consider 1 shotgun vs 1 dragoon to be balanced.

Looking at weapon costs and bounties, a dragoon is worth requiring 3 shotguns.  Its 3 kills for a dretch to be a goon and and 3 kills for the humans to kill the dragoon.  Sounds fair.  

I knew someone would use the '1vs1' should matter argument.  Are supposed to balance tyrants against naked riflemen too?

Sidenote: Tyrants are worth 800 credits, so they should be balanced around Chaingun/Battlesuit, imo.  Which tyrants aren't because they can shit out far more DPS than a chaingun.

I've seen existential risk take down a group of 4 hummies,

That's just bullshit too.  4 humans with shotties can theoretically insta-gib dragoon in one volley.  It only takes 2 volleys for 2 shotguns to kill a dragoon.   That situation sounds like lag, an ambush, or really really bad players.  

I've seen risk and he isn't that good anyway.

Move goons to S2 and humans will probably hit S2 before aliens nearly every time.  Shit, might as well just give humans S2 at the start instead of moving goons.