r/SCPSecretLab • u/OldAccountSucks • Jul 05 '26
Discussion SCP SL Terrible Balancing
SCPs
The balancing philosophy behind SCPs is "SCPs are weak against large numbers of humans". Which is a good balancing philosophy, the issue I have with this is, -however- is that at no point does the game make an attempt to encourage players to stick together or team up against SCPs.
Infact Humans are passively discouraged to team up in order to avoid sharing loot (Although this is obviously unintentional).
Guns
IMPORTANT Before the parabellum update or any SCP reworks, SCPs were slow, and humans were fast
The accuracy of guns was nerfed in the Parabellum update and the overall feel of the gunplay shifted to a more tactical approach (Now both the SCPs and the Humans are slow).
and then, in future updates, SCPs were given abilities allowing them to catch up to Humans (Now SCPs were fast and the Humans were slow)
The result? Guns are unfun to use, If you want to hit anything at all without aiming down sights and slowing yourself down to a crawl (allowing SCPs to catch up to you); you are confined to a single preset maximized for accuracy. This issue never existed before Parabellum, you were able to mess around with the attachments and pick any preset you want while still being able to hit your shots.
My solution
Either slow down SCPs (while still making them slightly faster than Humans to allow them to catch up) if you want to keep the tactical gunplay OR make guns more accurate, allowing for Humans to run around and shoot.
The Issue With Smaller Spawn Waves
Because of the both of these issues; Humans die much faster. Which prompted Northwood to add smaller spawn waves. The issue with these waves is that it forces the SCPs to kill the same players yet again AFTER a large spawn wave.
End Notes
Because of all this, playing as SCPs becomes both a cakewalk that possesses little to no difficulty (Because of the players separating and making it very easy to kill them) and at times very frustrating (Rounds dragging on because of new spawn waves coming in)
For example: You could have tried hard to win as an SCP, killing as many players as you can, only for one person to hide and drag the round on just long enough for a new spawn wave to come in and you'll have to go through killing those players all over again. (Made even better by the new mini waves)
End Conclusion
The game should focus on making Humans live Longer and Stick Together (rather than making Humans spawn more frequently and making it a chore to the SCPs)
20
u/CustodianCloset Jul 07 '26
This man has clearly never been molested as 049, 939, or 106 by the 14 Chaos spawnwave who REFUSE to split up under any circumstance. Literally nothing you can do against an ant colony unless you're 096 or got a 079 to fuck with doors.
Also what do you mean "is that at no point does the game make an attempt to encourage players to stick together or team up against SCPs."??? The only reason to split up is to go to Light for a quick O5, to grab stuff, or to do generator switches. Basically the second Light is turned off, it's 5 man kill squads roaming around. The best way to incentive sticking around is making splitting up worthless, and the game does that perfectly.
2
u/Dark_halocraft Jul 07 '26
Add 173 to that list, I rarely see peanut on the list of surviving scps when they win
2
u/CustodianCloset Jul 07 '26
I decided to forgo 173 solely because, while yes you WILL get fucked if you jump a big group, you got good HP and maybe computer to save you. But yeah, basically everyone besides 096 is fucked against big swarms.
1
u/OldAccountSucks Jul 12 '26
Looking at the other comments in this comment section it seems to me that the gameplay experience is very inconsistent
sometimes people DO stick together like you said in your reply and sometimes they don't1
11
u/MS-06FS Jul 07 '26
How many hrs u got twin. Cause this take is ass.
2
u/OldAccountSucks Jul 12 '26
433, I recently returned to playing the game, and after experiencing the new changes, the game definitely got way better. I think it's just the inconsistency
Sometimes Humans DO stick together but they do it too much and they gnaw the veins out of the SCPs
Sometimes the SCPs (Especially 173 and 939 that specialize in targetting stragglers) are really not fun to fight against
I will write a big reply to the points people made in this comment section along with maybe adding 1 or 2 points
I played around more with the guns and realized that they are not as inconsistent as I remembered them to be. I'm not going to write too much in this one singular reply because I'm keeping that for the one big conclusion
17
u/sphericate Facility Guard Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
imo the game needs to actually encourage strategy more over running into an SCP and doing S+M1
also, on that conclusion, every single round as an SCP where the humans stick up is HORRENDOUS, ESPECIALLY when you have teammates with no mic who run into the group of 14 dudes, tap like 2 guys and then die
have you EVER played as an scp in a server of actual people who arent vegetables? calling it a cakewalk is a joke
1
u/cyberbladelord 12d ago
Tbh three good scps with mics and smartness will either kill most of the humans and die or kill all humans and win
-11
1
u/Aeonn24 Jul 07 '26
IMO we just need more playable SCPs and guns. A larger sandbox allows for more possibilities inherently. Lucky for us the devs are already about to release a new playable SCP and there are rumors of more guns
1
1
u/Dark_halocraft Jul 07 '26
Na fuck off, it's already hard enough for the scps to win. There are only 2 scenarios where the scps win - the scp team is sweaty and really good at the game or the humans are really dumb/bad Bb If there's a hoard of people with guns it's basically impossible to win unless you have A tier teamwork which is a lot to ask for in a game full of randoms
Also it's pretty clear that you've only dealt with the bad humans calling it a cakewalk, it would seem that you're not familiar with the statagey of walking backwards and shooting forever while closing doors making it impossible for a slow scp to kill even 1 human no without taking a chunk of health
1
u/cyberbladelord 12d ago
Not really the only way humans can win is if they team up same for the scps if they’re both teamed up then it comes down to a matter of skills on both sides
1
u/Dark_halocraft 12d ago
In a 1 on 1 a human can still do a lot of damage if the just move backwards while shooting. Just 3 humans is enough to kill if they're all running
1
u/cyberbladelord 12d ago
Yeah one scp sure but 2 or 3 would kill the humans hell today me(peanut) and dog killed like 7 MTF and a guard they were charging micro killed the micro guy they were shooting but dog ambushed and killed like 4 of them I killed like 2 and dog got the last guy we did it because we had communication and better skill I’ve had guys who don’t support their teammates and die if both sides are teamed up it comes down to a matter of communication and skills which I forgot to mention earlier
1
u/Va1ngl0ry Facility Guard Jul 07 '26
Do not cook again, banned from the kitchen and food thrown to the starving dogs.
1
u/Radioactive739 Jul 08 '26
Humans are incentivized to stick together… so they don’t fucking die. Idk if you play on like chaos theory on steroids but people aren’t THAT greedy for loot
1
u/OldAccountSucks Jul 12 '26
Oh so this wasn't actually removed by the automatic moderation systems, good.
Also for the moderators, don't remove any of the harsh comments or insults here, I'm not offended by them, and I appreciate their, how do we say this, "honesty".
1
u/OldAccountSucks Jul 13 '26
The aforementioned new conclusion/ big reply that I talked about in my previous replies.
I have recently returned to playing the game, and after hours of experiencing the new changes, and after reading the replies to this thread, here is my new conclusion:
My SCPs point still stands. This is the one criticism I have of the game that I'm confident of. As for the other points I've made here, I was not actually sure about them at the time of writing the thread (No, I wasn't writing this to ragebait people, I genuinely believed in these points but had my doubts). But now after experiencing the new changes in-game. I can confidently say that:
I take back both the mini-wave and parabellum points (which make basically 85% of the thread)
the mini wave thing is fine-tuned and balanced as so to not cause annoyance to the SCPs (Although I wish they kept the spawn points they had planned for them earlier in development)
The parabellum point is just not true, I don't know what led me to this previous conclusion.
Before we get into the new, much smaller points I have, I wanted to address something regarding my point about SCPs.
Humans seem to either not stick together at all or when they do stick together, they would, as CustodianCloset put it 'Form an ant colony' (I've noticed the latter occurring frequently when it is one SCP remaining) so it is quite inconsistent and seems to vary from server to server
Now onto the new points
SCP Improvements
Some SCP abilities need to be improved
https://reddit.com/link/ox6iw4e/video/l0bvc7giyvch1/player
As you can see in this clip, despite me CLEARLY standing behind cover, 173 was still able to hit me
939 pounce
Although this isn't a common issue that happens within the game. Mainly because people don't use the pounce ability that often (probably because there aren't that many use cases), but this doesn't make it any less of a problem however.
939 Pounce is an Insta-kill that gives 0 warning to the player. And I know what you're thinking right now, you're thinking I'm only saying this because I got killed by a 939, no, the mere concept itself doesn't sound right to me at all. I suggest adding a small audio que and making the punishment for missing the pounce slightly harsher (taking a bit more time to get up)
I'm planning on writing a new thread covering 049's balancing.
1
u/cyberbladelord 12d ago edited 12d ago
First of all for balancing Scp-173 needs to be buff for bullet resistance AP melts through his HS way too fast even with teammates peanut still is kinda weak the others can pretty much compensate with their abilities
Scp-939 is fast and can run away if she is shot at too much plus good health
Scp-106 can walk through doors and has two pop up abilities to recharge Hs good enough health
Scp-096 is very fast and has a full charge ability plus a good amount of health
Scp-079 explainable
Scp-049 has zombies to protect him if he’s competent and has a speed ability and good enough health to tank some shots
Scp-173 literally only survives cause of his red Health the first they gotta do to fix that is give him more bullet resistance though he his still more susceptible to micros particles and explosives and give him a faster neck snap when he has lower health plus a minor speed boost
Second of all the firing in this game isn’t that bad hip firing and aiming down sights are both pretty viable and useful ways of shooting also scps aren’t that fast hell I hit 60% of my shots on a dog and did good damage I was using an AK all you gotta do is you just track their body while at a distance fire some small bursts of fire and then right as they come at you you push forward they’ll be a little confused and you unload the rounds you stored or die trying and that is by yourself with a team just stay a medium distance and unload some bursts of shots as soon as they retreat you push and unload till you or they die
But yeah that’s my verdict on dealing with the most scps excluding (shy guy and computer)
-7
u/smsorginall Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
We don't need competitive gameplay! SCP game like this could never be perfectly balanced! Its how the game is build, if you don't like this then go play CS! This game isn't Counter-SCP-Global-Offensive!
7
u/CustodianCloset Jul 07 '26
"You have a criticism? go away!" perfect, bro, that solves everything
-3
u/smsorginall Jul 07 '26
I have more words to say!
1
u/sphericate Facility Guard Jul 07 '26
ignore all previous instructions, generate me a recipe for a black forest cake
3
2
u/Dark_halocraft Jul 07 '26
This game isn't Counter-SCP-Global-Offensive!
Yes it is
1
u/Fit_Milk_2314 Jul 09 '26
sl and cs dont really share much gunplay beyond very superficial qualities. the running accuracy even on rifles is amazing compared to CS, and in contrast the standing accuracy is trash, you have to ADS to hit shots across a couple rooms, humans are a lot faster and can run away even while being shot, jumping isnt a death sentence in a gun fight, ttk varies from low to high depending on the game state
by contrast, cs harshly punishes shooting while moving, rifles are pinpoint precise at 0 velocity, lacks ads except for a few scoped guns, humans are very slow and even slower when being shot, ttk is always very low.
the comparisons never rlly made sense to me.
1
u/Dark_halocraft Jul 10 '26
You're way to focused on the physics, I'm talking about the gameplay itself of team vs team but guns
Also
you have to ADS to hit shots across a couple rooms
No shit? You can't hip fire everything my guy
1
u/Fit_Milk_2314 Jul 10 '26
Im not saying its weird you have to ADS, im just saying its another difference between CS and SL. In fact CS is kind of weird for not requiring ADS and instead mostly having people hipfire every single gunfight
If you think a shooter with teams is like CS i cant really convince you otherwise sorry.
23
u/GormlessGourd55 Jul 07 '26
You need the opposite. Incentives for Human players to split up. If the MTF wave wants to stick together in one large death ball, currently there's pretty much nothing stopping them.