Xenos are too common for how unfun they are

[Lazengann]

Xeno infestation is refreshing and fun once in a while but they're really no fun to be up against. They move way too fast and can stun you instantly and then you have to wait forever to even die. Seems like they're showing up multiple times per day and they completely disrupt whatever round is going on every time.

[WJohnston]

get good

no seriously i made sure you can counter them in melee if you know what you're doing.

have an item in your active hand, you're guaranteed a grace hit from disarm. hold a shield, total immunity to pouncing and in fact knocks them down, stick together, xenos don't like attacking groups when they're alone, use fire to obliterate their nests etc. mechs stomp their shit in, cyborgs are extremely effective at pulling you out of trouble, keep your distance from praetorians and queens because tail sweep is a thing.

get good

[Scott]

It's another "try to whine something out of the game" episode. These threads are getting common.

[cedarbridge]

get good

no seriously i made sure you can counter them in melee if you know what you're doing.

have an item in your active hand, you're guaranteed a grace hit from disarm. hold a shield, total immunity to pouncing and in fact knocks them down, stick together, xenos don't like attacking groups when they're alone, use fire to obliterate their nests etc. mechs stomp their shit in, cyborgs are extremely effective at pulling you out of trouble, keep your distance from praetorians and queens because tail sweep is a thing.

get good

Did you read the complaint? "X is happening too often" telling them "lol git gud" doesn't solve the issue that if something really is happening more than it really should.

[Lazengann]

How do you stop them from just throwing a facehugger at you?

[captain sawrge]

Xenos are godawful garbage and completely unfun to play against, not to mention a guaranteed shuttle call

[lzimann]

Getting good doesn't change the fact that they are boring as fuck to play as/against.

[ShadowDimentio]

>Too common
>Virtually never happen outside of long as fuck rounds where they get event'd
>Even then get annhilated 9/10 times due to bad players getting xeno'd
>That absurdly rare occurrence is too common

>Alternatively spawned lavaland alien setpiece
>That requires a ton of work to get to and aren't found 9/10 times
>Get annhilated 9/10 of those 9/10 times due to aforementioned incompetent xenos
>Too common

Yeah no, and fuck you for trying to remove xenos.

[Lazengann]

Where did I say remove xenos

[cedarbridge]

>Too common
>Virtually never happen outside of long as fuck rounds where they get event'd
>Even then get annhilated 9/10 times due to bad players getting xeno'd
>That absurdly rare occurrence is too common

>Alternatively spawned lavaland alien setpiece
>That requires a ton of work to get to and aren't found 9/10 times
>Get annhilated 9/10 of those 9/10 times due to aforementioned incompetent xenos
>Too common

Yeah no, and fuck you for trying to remove xenos.

Its another "Shadow is wrong" episode.

[WJohnston]

>how do you stop them from throwing a facehugger at you

do you even know how xenos function? put a friggin helmet on and you're IMMUNE to facehuggers. there's SO MANY things that make you totally immune to them. bio hoods, any space helmet (rigsuit or otherwise), riot helmets and welding masks, and possibly still pumpkin helmets. they're everywhere.

[WJohnston]

Oh and to touch on the actual problems xenos seem to have:

Xenos frequently get stomped out too early, and the queen has very little to do for most of the game because of her lack of speed.

So to remedy this: I have two things I'd like to try out (whenever I get off my lazy ass and do them)

1. The queen's egg laying process is changed to be a stationary ovipositor, which periodically lays eggs (every 10 seconds, maybe). This eliminates scenarios where queens don't lay enough eggs. She also gains blob-like vision that is independent of her body while on the ovipositor, in order to oversee the hive, combat, and whatever else. Weed nodes behave like cameras, so there is incentive for the crew to destroy those, and for xenos to plant them everywhere.
2. Xeno spawn event starts with two full grown xeno drones. This is to hopefully give a chance to whoever is the more competent player to be the queen, and to allow xenos to IMMEDIATELY start hunting as soon as the queen is set up, rather than waiting for idiot players to run into the nest and an additional ten minutes while they burst and grow to adulthood while under perpetual assault.

I'm fully aware that xenos have an absolutely RIDICULOUSLY MONSTROUS snowball curve, where they presently start extremely weak, and become unstoppably godlike later on. The boring part is usually the start of the curve, so hopefully this'll remedy that a little bit.

[John_Oxford]

>xeno coder defending xeno's
>is the only one defending xenos

just port raw colonial marines code to make xenos interesting

[PKPenguin321]

Xenos are at their coolest when I spawn a lone doomguy death squad officer to shoot them all

[Slignerd]

How do you stop them from just throwing a facehugger at you?

Wearing head protection helps. I really shouldn't have to tell you that.

>xeno coder defending xeno's
>is the only one defending xenos

just port raw colonial marines code to make xenos interesting

> Colonial Marines

How about you morons stop comparing our non-trash xenos to their trash ones? Colonial Marines as codebase and server both is pure garbage and bringing it up just on the "le xeno server xd" basis, despite them being the ones who took xenos from /tg/, is just disrespectful.

[Oldman Robustin]

I tried to overhaul xenos last year but got Korblocked.

The plan was to move gameplay away from hunters, nerf hunter speed, and then either make a mode or a late-round event that required the crew to purge a lavaland xeno nest (player controlled) and the xenos would have to try and overtake the station.

CM has a lot of flaws but they proved that a TDM-style round of Xenos v. Crew can work. We also have several advantages in that our medical system isn't cancer and we don't a terrible hodgepodge of counter-intuitive RP rules (You can behead people but only if they aren't infested yet, once they're infested you can't even break their limbs to stop them from running, oh and you cant hack up corpses unless your the queen, who can flat out gib them whenever she wants, also here's a 50 page manual on how you're allowed to use facehuggers...).

[captain sawrge]

A better plan is to do away with them because they are a shitty poorly balanced conversion mode in disguise

[Slignerd]

Alternatively accept the idea that other might, gasp, enjoy it and then leave it as it is.

[FantasticFwoosh]

A better plan is to do away with them because they are a shitty poorly balanced conversion mode in disguise

You're not wrong, it is convoluted one way conversion by drawing ghosts out of them, for what? Organs and overpriced skin isn't worth anything when the station is destroyed. You can't justify keeping them alive except for just making their death profitable without entering some crazy Yatuja deathgame tier hunting in releasing them just to catch & kill them again.

In my opinion we should wash any trace of xenos outside of a admin button/super-rare event out of the game because the simple mobs are bad (ugly, move around too fast, give too expensive pelts) and eggs are too convenient for people to feign "Oh look at this pretty egg, i better take my mask off and look REAL hard into it" for a excuse to become a out of round antagonist.

- "Xeno attack" reference is also a bit of a trope with ruins as people find ways to somehow insert non harmful xeno assets like splatted face huggers so they can go "hurr hurr, i saw that in a movie once" level trivia.

Alternatively accept the idea that other might, gasp, enjoy it and then leave it as it is.

As given, everyone loves playing antagonist, even for such a iconic one like a xenomorph, its like playing the T-rex/velociraptors out of jurassic part x20.

I mean VG and some other coderbased replaced xenos entirely with terror spiders.

[iamgoofball]

ITT: two furries try to justify their fetish

[FantasticFwoosh]

ITT: two furries try to justify their fetish

Kiss me wearing your special leather Jambroni outfit please Goof, i love you for this comment.

[Qbopper]

wow, this fucking thread

>I don't like xenos, they aren't fun to fight - they're fine every onmce in a while but are too common in their current state
>GET GOOD PUT ON A MASK HOLD AN ITEM ETC ETC

seriously holy shit dude did you not read the OP? why did you jump down his throat? They didn't post "fuck xenos remove them its impossible to win" he literally said "xenos are a bit too common for my tastes and aren't fun to fight"

You started an argument out of nothing

on topic: I think if we just toned down how often they could be spawned from the random event pool it would make things better - I agree with the "cool once in a while but not overly fun to fight" bit of your post, I don't want them removed

[Septavius]

In what world are xenos a common occurrence? Where have I been?

[FantasticFwoosh]

In what world are xenos a common occurrence? Where have I been?

Hello stranger, welcome the magical world of irresponsible admin button presses to end long drawn out rounds, 2% chance xeno egg appearing in the xenobio lab and about 40% chance of a live xeno egg appearing on lavaland via a ruin, sometimes even twice.

[Septavius]

Maybe I just have terrible luck then, since I seem to miss any xeno related rounds.

[oranges]

>xeno coder defending xeno's
>is the only one defending xenos

just port raw colonial marines code to make xenos interesting

No thanks we dont' want code aids

[WJohnston]

in case you haven't noticed i DID give appropriate feedback on how i'd like to make xenos more fun to play against, but just in case it isn't clear after years of already having said this, i'll say it again:



Xenos are meant to be round enders.

They are, for all intents and purposes, one of the most powerful antags in the game. They can only randomly spawn very late into a round (usually an hour in, though rarely earlier), by lavaland ruin screwery, or by admins. I understand that they can get stomped out early, and that the queen doesn't have much to do most of the time (past the micromanaging nightmare that is early game for her) and again, this is explained in the above post.

As for fighting them, this has ALSO been explained in an above post, there are proper counters to fighting them, I'm not sure what else you want me to say here. Most combat in this game is pretty shit, xenos offer more than most in that even though they provide lots of combat (which is, again, innately shit) they are at least consistent in how to fight them. No RNG here (outside of neurotoxic spit but that's a problem with tasers and shields being a general block chance nonsense).

[FantasticFwoosh]

Round enders never deserve a place in the active living round before they are DUE. They more fit a role of a horseman of the apocalpse fitting to the title rather than a omnipresent threat of a single xeno egg EVER being in existance.

[oranges]

in case you haven't noticed i DID give appropriate feedback on how i'd like to make xenos more fun to play against, but just in case it isn't clear after years of already having said this, i'll say it again:



Xenos are meant to be round enders.

They are, for all intents and purposes, one of the most powerful antags in the game. They can only randomly spawn very late into a round (usually an hour in, though rarely earlier), by lavaland ruin screwery, or by admins. I understand that they can get stomped out early, and that the queen doesn't have much to do most of the time (past the micromanaging nightmare that is early game for her) and again, this is explained in the above post.

As for fighting them, this has ALSO been explained in an above post, there are proper counters to fighting them, I'm not sure what else you want me to say here. Most combat in this game is pretty shit, xenos offer more than most in that even though they provide lots of combat (which is, again, innately shit) they are at least consistent in how to fight them. No RNG here (outside of neurotoxic spit but that's a problem with tasers and shields being a general block chance nonsense).

The problem is that certain people, notably coaix and a few others, have been pushing them more into the round than they should necessarily be.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Can we agree to replace them out of the code if they are baiting coders into putting them in?

[Slignerd]

Can we agree to replace them out of the code if they are baiting coders into putting them in?

No

[MrEousTranger]

Can we agree to replace them out of the code if they are baiting coders into putting them in?

No

Yeah fuck no

Haven't seen a xeno in the past month, maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I personally enjoy xenos a lot so I never have an issue with them. Also admins never spawn them to my knowledge excluding the maids as much as I try to get them to.


And I'm not one of those fetish xeno fuckers either...

Spoiler:

Probably

[PKPenguin321]

just yesterday i popped into sybil when it had 0 admins and there were no humans left, just xenos, with no shuttle called
theyre definitely still a thing

[MrEousTranger]

ITT: two furries try to justify their fetish

Quoting your own quote

For shame goofball

For shame

[John_Oxford]

i think the trend of removing things that have been here for 4+ years and have proven to be fund is going to push people who play the game for those features away. not just the cancer ones like me too.

the game isnt the coders to make play and run, its the coders to take our opinion on shit which appears to have been memed away from actually being true.

more or less this is the point where i mark in time that /tg/ decided it wanted to be new and original and killed itself in the process.

don't worry though i'll still be here to shitpost when the servers long gone

[Qbopper]

Xenos are meant to be round enders.

That being the case doesn't mean they can't be tweaked to be more fun, though

That being the case also proves the OP correct - if xenos are meant to be round enders, why should they be occurring often

[Wyzack]

>Xenos are too common

>WHAT THE FUCK YOU SCRUB THEY ARET HARDWHY DO YOU THINK THEY ARE HARD THEY ARE EASY TO BEAT THEY ARE SUPOSED TO BE ROUND ENDERS

ok

[captain sawrge]

i think the trend of removing things that have been here for 4+ years and have proven to be fund is going to push people who play the game for those features away. not just the cancer ones like me too.

The playerbase is in constant fluctuation. People leave all the time and are very quickly replaced.

If anything, listening to the "playerbase" is one of the biggest problems the server has because everyone has a differing opinion on how the game should flow and play and trying to cater to everyone at once just leads to a directionless mess of unfinished features, ill-conceived ideas and a neverending war of balance and policy changes.

No one has or will ever agree on anything and trying to cater to The Playerbase is completely moot because it isn't a hivemind, it's an incredibly large and diverse group of people in constant flux.

[Incomptinence]

Sorry but I would rather xenos end the round than engine releases.

[WJohnston]

Xenos are meant to be round enders.

That being the case doesn't mean they can't be tweaked to be more fun, though

That being the case also proves the OP correct - if xenos are meant to be round enders, why should they be occurring often

Did you not read the rest of the post on how I suggested they can be improved to be more fun?

Besides, as for how often they actually APPEAR in rounds, it'd be good to see how often xenos are actually spawned on a percent of all rounds. Of course, admin spawned xenos are a thing, and so are ruins spawned ones. We can assume those to be relatively non-important given how quickly those can be snuffed out by player incompetence.

[Slignerd]

>I don't like xenos, they aren't fun to fight - they're fine every onmce in a while but are too common in their current state
>GET GOOD PUT ON A MASK HOLD AN ITEM ETC ETC

>Xenos are too common
>WHAT THE FUCK YOU SCRUB THEY ARET HARDWHY DO YOU THINK THEY ARE HARD THEY ARE EASY TO BEAT THEY ARE SUPOSED TO BE ROUND ENDERS

I think you guys missed a part of the original post:

They move way too fast and can stun you instantly and then you have to wait forever to even die.

I'd say a "get good" response wasn't too out of place.

[Qbopper]

The main point of the OP wasn't the bit warranting the "get good" response, though

You can believe xenos are too common (especially when the main defender of them says in bold text they're designed to end rounds) and find them frustratingly hard to fight, and then only go on to suggest your first point be addressed

No one said "remove xenos" or "make xenos take zero effort to kill", he merely pointed out that he doesn't like to fight them - it's in the title of the thread, even. He never asked for xenos to have radical changes to how they work, he just wants them to appear less often because they work as a better event when it's rare

We've already managed to change the topic from "please reduce the amount of xeno spawns/stop spawning them admins" to "xenos are hard to fight" because of one throwaway line about a personal opinion

Xenos are meant to be round enders.

That being the case doesn't mean they can't be tweaked to be more fun, though

That being the case also proves the OP correct - if xenos are meant to be round enders, why should they be occurring often

Did you not read the rest of the post on how I suggested they can be improved to be more fun?

Besides, as for how often they actually APPEAR in rounds, it'd be good to see how often xenos are actually spawned on a percent of all rounds. Of course, admin spawned xenos are a thing, and so are ruins spawned ones. We can assume those to be relatively non-important given how quickly those can be snuffed out by player incompetence.

The OP's issue isn't "xenos are boring and hard to play at the start", the issue is "when xenos have a fair bodycount they become annoying and unfun to play against" - all your post proposed was making things easier for the xenos

Please don't pull the "did you not read" card when you miss the point as well

I don't know how many xenos are random events/admin spawned/etc. but that would be worth looking into I suppose

[Cobby]

Riddle me this.

SIDE, ROUND ENDING, ANTAG

[WJohnston]

yeah, and what do you call meteors or blobs or radiation storms or spiders?

these also kill huge parts of the crew. whether they be given to players or not (blob vs meteors).

i dont think anyone should have a problem with side antags or side events that can potentially destroy the current round, because clearly we still have a lot of them. this IS a chaos simulator, get used to it.

[Qbopper]

yeah, and what do you call meteors or blobs or radiation storms or spiders?

these also kill huge parts of the crew. whether they be given to players or not (blob vs meteors).

i dont think anyone should have a problem with side antags or side events that can potentially destroy the current round, because clearly we still have a lot of them. this IS a chaos simulator, get used to it.

"Xenos are too common for how unfun they are"

xenos destroying a round? whatever, not the point of the discussion

xenos destroying rounds too often is the topic - no one is arguing for a nerf, the point is "please make xenos spawn less often"

are you not reading my posts

[WJohnston]

Riddle me this.

SIDE, ROUND ENDING, ANTAG

xenos destroying a round? whatever, not the point of the discussion

xenos destroying rounds too often is the topic - no one is arguing for a nerf, the point is "please make xenos spawn less often"

are you not reading my posts

are you not reading my posts

ARE YOU?

Do I have to quote and explicitly state literally every person I am referring to? Can you not follow the conversation going on here? I am replying to excessive stating that they are round ending antags.

Jesus christ man, go away. You're trying to make it look like I'm still going on about the original post when I am QUITE CLEARLY NOT.

[Qbopper]

Fair enough, that's my bad, I should probably have put that together

[Cobby]

meteors, rad storms, aren't sentient and can easily be avoided by one's position.

Spiders are a nuisance but they aren't sentient unless xenobio shenanigans is at work

Blob is garbo, I don't like it even as its own gm [HoG was a more interesting RTS sim imo].

I don't recall any of these needing several gearchecks and making sure you are with several people just to be able to fight a single one "on even ground" that also has a one hit button to remove those gearchecks with no room for failing. Even swarmers who literally eat the station aren't a pain like these.

I don't know what the original purpose of adding xenos in was [probably just "oh it's a space station, aliens would be cool"] but in practice I've always viewed them as the vintage variant of ghost roles. I'd always hope that I could be one once I died because that was probably the only way I was coming back into the game. Now that they have some pretty big buffs AND since ghost roles are a thing, I think it would be good to make them a rarity instead of uncommon [especially considering the push for longer rounds].

SORRY IM CONVOLUTING THE "XENOS ARE BAD" AND "XENOS ARE TOO COMMON" SUBJECTS SORRY!

[Qbopper]

Eh, you addressed "we should make them rarer"

Seems like a reasonable assessment, though I don't know if I agree on "more of a pain than swarmers"

[FantasticFwoosh]

Swarmers only delay a round that is intended to finish since they are non-lethal (eat both consoles and auto call or leave people alive to call shuttle themselves), without a admin all the xenos can extend a hellish extension to a round by just dominating it until enough ahelps in admin IRC are called to just send a shuttle or activate the nuke for a hard reset.

> Xenos wait around the perimiter of arrivals to throw facehuggers to new latejoin hosts so they can join the xeno collective for free antag (or expect to kill/be killed by ERT)