Thoughts From Experience
Tyler
Join Date: 2002-11-13 Member: 8418Members
Join Date: 2002-11-13 Member: 8418Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Fixes etc...</div> I have been playing this game obsessively with great success, and I think I can make a pretty good judgement on a number of things.
First and obviously, The Lag
-It snowballs. It's horrible. I don't really have to tell you, its everywhere, you know by now. The worst part is the game-finder cannot be accurate with finding this lag. Somebody said it was a memory leak I think. Finding a server with a normal ping is like manna in the dessert.
<i>Marine turrets </i>
-90% of a commander's success is placing his turrets well. this is really stupid and poor design. aliens can just sneak around and kill factories/portals/pods if your commander isnt on the bleeding edge of intelligent turret placement. losing your nozzles to bad turret placement is a game ender. maybe make turrets smarter or attack through structures to hit skulks and the like. this would really help marines, and they need it.
<i>Buildings</i>
-i'm reluctant to say this, since aliens are so strong, but the hitboxes, or whatever, on marine buildings are terrible. you can use a ranged attack versus a marine building for 10 minutes and not hit it, with dead on aim. you have to aim for specific parts of the building, and you have NO way to tell if you are damaging it.
-As a marine you can tell if you are hitting a structure, cause the alien structures convulse and you can usually see the life circle(great!), but as aliens you need some kind of feedback to know if you are hitting a marine building. optimally, the life circle just needs to show up better.
-bile bomb is totally worthless versus buildings, its impossible to be accurate with this. wtf is up with the splash, where is it? I think this one is pretty public by now.
-Alien buildings and seige cannons. sometimes a cannon will fire at alien buildings for 20 minutes and not kill them, with no healing or def towers. do def towers even heal buildings like they say? i have never seen it in action, but i cant tell.
-<u>getting stuck under buildings is annoying as ^%%#.</u> please fix this. it seriously makes me want to quit instantly.
<i>Marines</i>
-Some of the marine "nerfing" was a little overboard, ecspecially the prices. Marines seriously have a problem winning, even with a stacked team. Its <i>really</i> hard.
-Commander needs a function to waypoint all troops to one spot. Selecting and giving waypoints to individuals also needs to be easier.
-If you arent going to fix turrets then at LEAST place the command pods so that an alien cannot hide behind them and kill them, this is REALLY BAD DESIGN. do i need several mobile marines just for base defense?
<i>Aliens</i>
-"regen + adrenaline + Fade" >> "the entire marine arsenal". seriously. aliens are really powerful. i see marines win about 1 in 6 games or less. im starting to avoid marines purposely.
-Aliens seem to be loaded with resources, or they have a good early advantage in strength, cause they take about 75% of the nozzles every game in the first 15 minutes, while marines will get lucky if they take 3 or four, and dont lose any to bad turret placement. This rarely deviates. marines if they are halfway intelligent will secure one hive early but aliens only need two hives to win. see above bullet.
If anyone says the game hasnt matured enough, and it will balance itself, please shove your mysticism crap and play real opponents. That argument is really sad. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo--> I think with a few small fixes this game can improve 20x.
First and obviously, The Lag
-It snowballs. It's horrible. I don't really have to tell you, its everywhere, you know by now. The worst part is the game-finder cannot be accurate with finding this lag. Somebody said it was a memory leak I think. Finding a server with a normal ping is like manna in the dessert.
<i>Marine turrets </i>
-90% of a commander's success is placing his turrets well. this is really stupid and poor design. aliens can just sneak around and kill factories/portals/pods if your commander isnt on the bleeding edge of intelligent turret placement. losing your nozzles to bad turret placement is a game ender. maybe make turrets smarter or attack through structures to hit skulks and the like. this would really help marines, and they need it.
<i>Buildings</i>
-i'm reluctant to say this, since aliens are so strong, but the hitboxes, or whatever, on marine buildings are terrible. you can use a ranged attack versus a marine building for 10 minutes and not hit it, with dead on aim. you have to aim for specific parts of the building, and you have NO way to tell if you are damaging it.
-As a marine you can tell if you are hitting a structure, cause the alien structures convulse and you can usually see the life circle(great!), but as aliens you need some kind of feedback to know if you are hitting a marine building. optimally, the life circle just needs to show up better.
-bile bomb is totally worthless versus buildings, its impossible to be accurate with this. wtf is up with the splash, where is it? I think this one is pretty public by now.
-Alien buildings and seige cannons. sometimes a cannon will fire at alien buildings for 20 minutes and not kill them, with no healing or def towers. do def towers even heal buildings like they say? i have never seen it in action, but i cant tell.
-<u>getting stuck under buildings is annoying as ^%%#.</u> please fix this. it seriously makes me want to quit instantly.
<i>Marines</i>
-Some of the marine "nerfing" was a little overboard, ecspecially the prices. Marines seriously have a problem winning, even with a stacked team. Its <i>really</i> hard.
-Commander needs a function to waypoint all troops to one spot. Selecting and giving waypoints to individuals also needs to be easier.
-If you arent going to fix turrets then at LEAST place the command pods so that an alien cannot hide behind them and kill them, this is REALLY BAD DESIGN. do i need several mobile marines just for base defense?
<i>Aliens</i>
-"regen + adrenaline + Fade" >> "the entire marine arsenal". seriously. aliens are really powerful. i see marines win about 1 in 6 games or less. im starting to avoid marines purposely.
-Aliens seem to be loaded with resources, or they have a good early advantage in strength, cause they take about 75% of the nozzles every game in the first 15 minutes, while marines will get lucky if they take 3 or four, and dont lose any to bad turret placement. This rarely deviates. marines if they are halfway intelligent will secure one hive early but aliens only need two hives to win. see above bullet.
If anyone says the game hasnt matured enough, and it will balance itself, please shove your mysticism crap and play real opponents. That argument is really sad. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo--> I think with a few small fixes this game can improve 20x.
Comments
* Game finders such as gamespy and all seeing eye tend to measure the time it takes for a network packet to go from your machine to the server and back. This is called a ping. This is supposed to be the smallest possible time, its a LOWER BOUND on your true ping once you join.
* True ping (once you join) is how long it takes for a game packet to go from your computer, to the server, BE PROCESSED and sent back. True ping is what really counts, and is what really causes lag, and is what shows up in the scoreboard when you press tab.
The above two probably have you thinking I'm stating the obvious.
But here's the trick: True ping rely on PROCESSED game packets. Part of the PROCESSING is done on the CPU, so if the server is running more stuff than it can handle (more players, more bullets, more chambers, more turrets) your ping will go up, because the server will make a backlog. To fix this, reduce the number of things in the game (by reducing the player limit, or optimizing the code... but hey, you can only optimize so far...)
True ping can also go up if the server doesn't have enough bandwidth to handle it. For example, lets say some guy is running a 20 player server off his DSL connection. The DSL connection is JUST NOT ENOUGH to handle 20 players. I'm sorry, it's not the code's fault in this case, it's purely the fault of the server admin. Its the same as someone hosting a 20 player game on a 28.8k modem - having a DSL / Cable does not make you god. Cable and DSL are in fact very limited. And this game has a LOT MORE stuff in it than a lot of other mods, and you can't magically transmit that to every player without using up MORE BANDWIDTH than other mods. Solution? Get the admin to drop the player limit by 2, until your ping matches the game finder ping.
IN OTHER WORDS
----------------------
If your ping does not nearly match (give or take 50) the ping in the game finder, THE SERVER ADMIN IS AT FAULT FOR LETTING TOO MANY PLAYERS ON. In ALMOST EVERY SINGLE CASE, reducing the number of players on will almost always fix the problem.
Note again: Game finder pings tend to be lower bounds. If a game finder is telling you 900 ping, it means the server is far away or the network is so heavily loaded by other stuff that even a simple ping can't get through. No network code can magically make electricity travel faster than it already does.
I hope this was enlightening.
And I think marine balance is juuuust fine. There's a million posts on the topic so I'm not going to write any details.