Black Mesa V6 - 'Not sure about the shotgun'-edition - Games

I'm almost certain that was fixed.

[QUOTE=Exploders;51302337]Oh man, I've never before wanted to leave an area with Alien Grunts until I played the retail, talk about overpowered, they dont even chip away at your health, they take massive bites out of it.[/QUOTE] Still? I knew this was an issue a few months ago but I thought it got fixed. :S I was 'fine' with the HECU and whatnot before and after QE (though as others have said the combat is mostly crouching and taking head shots than actual running around movement combat) but the a-grunts are actual bullshit.

Regarding balance: Please feel free to post suggestions and ideas on balance here, I'm always paying attention and I care a lot about getting this stuff right. I mean, that's one of the reasons why we're in Early Access to begin with - so the base game is really solid by the time we eventually get Xen in there. The whole team cares about this above all - we want Xen to just be really fun, first and foremost. We always felt that was the biggest weakness of the original Xen in particular. It wasn't really a fun, cohesive experience. We are going to get Xen to look amazing, no problem (well, it's hard, but we'll accomplish it for sure), it's nailing the gameplay and flow which is much tougher. We know that the Alien Grunts in particular still aren't in a very good place, even after our numerous attempts at tweaking them. Their AI was rewritten for the Surface Tension Update and I've rebalanced them with almost every update. They're likely going to get some kind of major gameplay overhaul for the Xen update - we're still trying to figure out the best direction to take them in. We actually just had a lengthy meeting about this today. Personally, I feel that a tanky enemy that shoots HOMING BEES is just inherently something which is really hard to make fun, and wasn't particularly great in the original either. There are many ways we can rebalance it to make it much more entertaining, but it's just something we have to play with until we find the right answer. Personally I'd like it if the Alien Grunts functioned more like some kind of mobile turret that absolutely swarms you (in bursts, with movement in between) with weakly homing bees that do relatively low damage rather than slowly peperring you with bees you can't dodge that hurt like hell. And then the Vorts fill the role of a sorta Alien HECU equivalent, with more intelligence and self-preservation on their part. This way, the HECU force you into a more sort of cover based, tactical gameplay, while the aliens give you that exciting run and gun style. Just my current thoughts - we're going to keep playing with it until we're absolutely sure that the aliens are in a good place. Any suggestions and ideas are more than welcome and will be considered with gratitude!

I know I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but security guards (in my opinion) really need a rebalance. Glock guards are hilariously OP when compared with 357 guards, which are useless in comparison. This wasn't as much of a problem in the mod version (at least in my opinion), where both Glock and 357 guards were, while slightly underpowered, balanced (again, my opinion) in a way that made both kinds of guards unique in a way that didn't undermine their usefulness in any given situation. In the mod version Glock guards did 5 damage per shot while 357 guards did 15 damage per shot. This was balanced by how Glock guards could fire 17 times while 357 guards only fired 6 times. Glock guards and 357 guards could therefore dish out similar amounts of damage (85 and 90 damage, respectively) but over different periods of time. While Glock guards were good at chipping off enemy health at a constant rate and being capable of damaging multiple enemies a good amount over a period of prolonged fire, in contrast 357 guards were good for short bursts of heavier hitting shots that made them useful for taking out individual enemies one at a time. In retail Black Mesa, Glock guards were given a buff that gave them over double their original damage (12), which is actually 4 more damage than even the player can do with their Glock. However, 357 guards were ignored and still do 15 damage per shot. While security guards as a whole were nerfed to fire slower with all weapons, this still throws the balance out of whack and we can see that Glock guards become superior to 357 guards. While they still do less damage than 357 guards, they do enough damage per shot that it really doesn't matter. While 357 guards still output 90 damage in 6 shots before needing to reload, retail Glock guards can output a steady stream of [I]204[/I] damage before needing to reload. In practice, the NPC 357 is basically a Glock with a smaller clip size. This is best scene in the optional stealth segment in ST:U, where you can alert the three soldiers to the security guard. With a Glock, the guard can reliably take out the three HECU in a manner of seconds. With a 357, however, the guard (while still managing to defeat the HECU most of the time) does so much slower. I believe it would be best if Glock damage be nerfed to 7 (player does 8) and 357 damage be buffed to 20 (player does 45). This would bring back the sense of distinction between the two weapons, as well as the way they worked in the mod version with two different rates of fire but overall same damage. The Glock and 357 would both do a reasonable amount of damage (as NPC MP5 does 120 damage overall), Glock doing overall 119 damage and 357 doing 120.

[QUOTE=TextFAMGUY1;51305434]Regarding balance: Please feel free to post suggestions and ideas on balance here, I'm always paying attention and I care a lot about getting this stuff right. I mean, that's one of the reasons why we're in Early Access to begin with - so the base game is really solid by the time we eventually get Xen in there. The whole team cares about this above all - we want Xen to just be really fun, first and foremost. We always felt that was the biggest weakness of the original Xen in particular. It wasn't really a fun, cohesive experience. We are going to get Xen to look amazing, no problem (well, it's hard, but we'll accomplish it for sure), it's nailing the gameplay and flow which is much tougher. We know that the Alien Grunts in particular still aren't in a very good place, even after our numerous attempts at tweaking them. Their AI was rewritten for the Surface Tension Update and I've rebalanced them with almost every update. They're likely going to get some kind of major gameplay overhaul for the Xen update - we're still trying to figure out the best direction to take them in. We actually just had a lengthy meeting about this today. Personally, I feel that a tanky enemy that shoots HOMING BEES is just inherently something which is really hard to make fun, and wasn't particularly great in the original either. There are many ways we can rebalance it to make it much more entertaining, but it's just something we have to play with until we find the right answer. Personally I'd like it if the Alien Grunts functioned more like some kind of mobile turret that absolutely swarms you (in bursts, with movement in between) with weakly homing bees that do relatively low damage rather than slowly peperring you with bees you can't dodge that hurt like hell. And then the Vorts fill the role of a sorta Alien HECU equivalent, with more intelligence and self-preservation on their part. This way, the HECU force you into a more sort of cover based, tactical gameplay, while the aliens give you that exciting run and gun style. Just my current thoughts - we're going to keep playing with it until we're absolutely sure that the aliens are in a good place. Any suggestions and ideas are more than welcome and will be considered with gratitude![/QUOTE] This isn't for Agrunts, but for QE I'd advise trying to figure out a away to add in some challenging gunplay in Questionable Ethics before the ambush. The only fighting you do is an easy ambush on some guys in the lobby and shoot some distracted soldiers in a corridor where they have no cover. And that's after a chapter of just swimming around rarely finding a bull squid. Maybe stick in like a vort shooting at you on conveyor belts or vorts and bullsquids 'porting in on you somewhere in Residue Processing, and then make a more challenging lobby fight the first time you go through or just something to keep your skills polished a bit more before the challenge gets ramped up to 11 in the ambush and surface tension.

[QUOTE=Kaleidescoop;51305531]-Snip-[/QUOTE] Wasn't even aware this was a balance issue. I'll take a look into it.

With the current balance of the Agrunts, a single Agrunt is pretty threatening since one alone can easily take out the majority of your armor or health with the hornets, I'd suggest a few things: Lowering damage output done by the hornets, Decreasing the Agrunt's firing speed (more than 2 grunts and it's a death sentence if you're at or below 50% health with next to no armor), Have the hornets either lose their homing ability after a certain distance, or as someone mentioned above, have the ability to shoot the hornets mid flight (downside would be wasting ammo on the hornets, and having to be accurate enough to shoot them)

tanks apaches and ospreys could use an extra rocket hit or 2 right now it's like 2 on normal. Too low. Striders needed 5-7 depending on skill.

[QUOTE=Hell-met;51306303]tanks apaches and ospreys could use an extra rocket hit or 2 right now it's like 2 on normal. Too low. Striders needed 5-7 depending on skill.[/QUOTE] quoting to emphasize his post.

also gordon should immediately start reloading the RPG after a unguided shot. That's like the whole point of not using the laser. while we're at it, ST should have a couple non-scripted RPG grunts. I don't even know if they're functional tho since I only recall one vs the first garg and it's scripted

please tone down or just straight up remove aimpunch. the crossbow buff means nothing if you cant dip out cover for even a second before aimpunch messes up your shot

Going back to the agrunts, I literally finished HL (hard) only a day or two ago so their original behavior is still fresh in my mind. They are really fucking tough. They're tanky and those hornets don't skimp on damage. I wouldn't call the hornets homing though, as they lose you if you can kinda break their line of sight which is what gives the player an advantage. I think the agrunts are meant to be something you really have to hide from, and pop out to do some damage before hiding again. I think the suggestion of making the agrunt something more of mobile tank/turret (which I believe was suggested a few posts up) is worthwhile, as opposed to really beefy footsoldier. Maybe this deviates a little far from the team's vision and the established lore (CC or Valve), but perhaps some coordination between agrunts and vorts could be interesting? Perhaps making the vorts as a sort of "field engineer/medic" role when they're around agrunts? Without thinking about what it means for implementation, perhaps vorts can heal small amounts at a time to agrunts, or borrowing from Sven-Coop, a revival ability? Or if they could place some kind of hornet shooting Xen turret that would be neat (What about that once xen gun emplacement in lambda core?). My point is that I think right now, a lot of the enemies just are on the same side and all just want to kill the player. What I think would make the combat interesting is if some enemies could cooperate in a fashion that makes the player have to think about how to approach them. If you have vorts that heal, maybe they're a higher priority than the agrunts themselves, or if they can drop a turret down, you might want to deal with that first. I think it could apply to the HECU as well. Though I haven't played BM in a very long time, so I don't know what has changed since.

[QUOTE=Xubs;51306541]-helicopters and rpgs-[/QUOTE] I actually gave up on using the rocket launcher after I got brought down to 15-20 HP for the second time, and just Tau cannoned the helicopter to death after hitting it once with the RPG

I would like to hear the garg sounds remade. in bm they just use that hollywood stock monster roar. agrunts and ickies are also not memorable. HL2 has cool icky sounds that beg to be used.

So what happened to Black Mesa: Insecurity? I remember the guy had a thread here, and the thread on the OP closed in 2012 apparently. I haven't check his ModDB yet, but is he still active?

I think they finished everything but the xen chapter and they were just waiting for xen to be released to finish the rest using assets

[QUOTE=chipsnapper2;51307661]So what happened to Black Mesa: Insecurity? I remember the guy had a thread here, and the thread on the OP closed in 2012 apparently. I haven't check his ModDB yet, but is he still active?[/QUOTE] Yes, [url=http://forums.blackmesasource.com/index.php/Thread/14680-Black-Mesa-Blueshift/?postID=624075#post624075]but he got hired by the Black Mesa team[/url] and so doesn't have as much time to work on it at the moment. I think this is actually a good sign for the mod, with inside access he can probably get around most limitations he might have had as a modder.

[QUOTE=Hell-met;51307215]I would like to hear the garg sounds remade. in bm they just use that hollywood stock monster roar. agrunts and ickies are also not memorable. HL2 has cool icky sounds that beg to be used.[/QUOTE] Also, the Houndeyes and the Alien Controllers sound too much alike each other in BM. This makes the LC reactor battle slightly annoying, which is why of these two enemies should have new sounds made for it. Preferably the Controller, since he's an enemy typically found floating above the player, which means he needs to be quickly identifiable by his sound (the loud shrieks they made in the original game served this purpose very well, the quiet whale moaning they do in BM really doesn't). In terms of balancing issues, I think ammo is sometimes a bit too plentiful for the higher difficulties. Picking up an MP5 should give the player only one half a magazine, just like in the original (or less than a full magazine, at any rate). I realize it may take too much effort to make such a radical change at this point, but [B]would it be possible to implement a HL2 type system where the amount of ammo found in ammo pickups changes depending on difficulty?[/B] For instance, Easy difficulty could have the current ammo pickup values; Normal could drop the values closer to (or the same as) the magazine capacity (so you don't pick up 12 Magnum bullets when picking up a Magnum, etc.); Hard difficulty could give you basically incomplete/half-empty clips. Or something like that anyway. Some non-essential ammo pointlessly lying around shortly before finding the huge ammo warehouse in ST (in the Osprey map) should be removed to make that event more special. For instance, the shotguns you find in a locker at the end of the map where you first fight the tanks, and there might be other examples too. How about it if the weapons the grunts drop in FAF and the later maps of ST would not give the player as much ammo as they would in previous parts of the game? This would greatly enhance the whole "marines losing to the aliens" theme in those maps, and force the player to resort far more to the hivehand and enemy infighting.

Would be cool to get Insecurity as a DLC sometime after Xen releases.

[QUOTE=VintageCat;51308154]Would be cool to get Insecurity as a DLC sometime after Xen releases.[/QUOTE]What if they plan on making Blue Shift and Opposing Force addons to help complete the Half-Life package, how cool would that be. [editline]4th November 2016[/editline] Opposing Force would probably be a little more difficult though, considering how different it was to Half-Life and Blue Shift

[QUOTE=Killer900;51308457]What if they plan on making Blue Shift and Opposing Force addons to help complete the Half-Life package, how cool would that be. [editline]4th November 2016[/editline] Opposing Force would probably be a little more difficult though, considering how different it was to Half-Life and Blue Shift[/QUOTE] Wasn't it already planned they had no intention of doing either BS or OF? I wouldn't be against them doing it though. BS I think would be pretty straight forward, OF requires many new assets.

also bring back the surface tension tentacle :frown: [thumb]http://www.sourceop.com/hell-met/BMS/tentacleconcept.jpg[/thumb] (okay maybe not exactly there but somewhere in that general area)

[QUOTE=VintageCat;51308154]Would be cool to get Insecurity as a DLC sometime after Xen releases.[/QUOTE] Can't, Insecurity uses some custom assets as well as ported assets from Left 4 Dead (Trains for Captive Freight). He'd have to replace all the assets with the team's, and for that he'd have to convince them to make assets for him.

What ever happened to casting a new Eli?

Has anybody else been watching the Opposing Force 2 mod on moddb? It looked amazing, but then it suddenly died and nobody wants to continue it apparently. [url]http://www.moddb.com/mods/opposing-force-2/images/of2-urban-chaos-canals9#imagebox[/url] I have this fantasy in my head where after Black Mesa is complete, the developers pick up where the OP42 devs left off and make Opposing Force 2 a reality. This is pretty much on par with my hope that Ross Scott will do Freeman's mind 2 though.

Except Freeman's Mind 2 is pretty much confirmed and the other is a total fantasy.

If you're looking for an Opposing Force mod for Black Mesa than this is it. It was even updated on the 31st so it's still worked on regularly. [url]http://www.moddb.com/mods/black-mesa-opposing-force[/url]

[QUOTE=Crypt19;51309011]Except Freeman's Mind 2 is pretty much confirmed[/QUOTE] When was it confirmed?

[QUOTE=Tuskin;51309173]When was it confirmed?[/QUOTE] I believe it was the first of his livestream videos.

Yepyep. [QUOTE=Garfuncle;51309074]If you're looking for an Opposing Force mod for Black Mesa than this is it. It was even updated on the 31st so it's still worked on regularly. [url]http://www.moddb.com/mods/black-mesa-opposing-force[/url][/QUOTE] I think those guys have a lot to learn before they get on the level of some of the other BM mods floating around. On top of that, a BM OF mod probably can't fully work since at the moment the BM src isn't released, meaning there's no programming possible. That locks out almost all of what made Opposing Force unique.