NS 2 Impressions -

NecropsY

<div class="IPBDescription">From NS1 to NS2</div>Long time NS1 player -

So first off i was really impressed with NS 2 innitaly, ie all the stuff (or most of the stuff) that made ns1 great is still here

if it aint broke dont fix it works great with this game - youv got the strategy the faced paced tracking aim/ vs dodge movment

however theres a couple things i think needs to be pointed out -

the yin and yang of gfx vs performance - all the lighting affects of skills/ maps / shadows abilities ect,
it sure looks nice when everything standing still, but for a fast paced game like NS when aliens are flying around at 100mph is not necessarily (make all these off by default)
Your core audience will not have hugely powered gaming systems (that i do) and even im getting massive FPS drops

A first Person Shooter's bread and butter will ALWAYS BE how well it Performs not how Pretty everything looks (Thats always second to FPS)

None wants to play a game that doesnt run well just look at SWTOR - (eww)

-Ok next big thing, clearly structures in this game are important however theres so many of them and they last forever - Clearly another performance drain
Every structure seems to have its own animations/ alpha-blending / or sprite - in the name of performance there should be a resource limit as to how much your PC is gonna spend rendering structures and structure effects -

Lastly Map Design, this is more of a minor gripe but in general i find NS1 maps way more OPEN, way more Viewable and with far less Pits and random Crap
To me all the new maps iv seen sofar are rather terrible -

Thats not to say the ideas are bad, just the implantation of 20 diff light sources again, resource drains difficult to move around in (tons of structures trip you up) ect

All in all i think NS2 is a huge step up, and certianly about the most fun game to play stratagy and fps wise, i hope it goes far but lets keep performance in mind ok Devs =)

Because your Core audience and future audience will have much worse computers than your Beta Testers and close Hardcore Gamers -

So dont forget that - =) (i know its just a beta-)

Kouji_San

The FPS issues are related to the game not being optimised and also not the render, The render is actually pretty fast. The main issue lies with the game code. Performance is increasing with every new build that comes out so I'd say don't worry about it :)


Good to see more marines returning to the battlefield :)

Flayra

Thanks for the feedback.

We're spending the vast majority of our programming time optimizing the game. We've made some big improvements and we expect to keep making more.

Underwhelmed

especially agree on map design, that was my initial reaction as well

on the plus side if the game gets delayed enough hardware will eventually catch up

NurEinMensch

I for one am happy with the maps being a bit more eye-candy heavy than the competitive crowd prefers, with lots of props and details. Simply because this is what sells. It's relatively easy to make "optimized" boxy maps with more simple geometry later on. I'm sure the community will do that if it's really wanted.

pSyk0mAn

Once you play marine and survive because you notice light flicker and shadow casting caused by a skulk approaching at the ceiling, you'll know that all the light fx aren't just for eye candy.
But in general I agree about performance > visuals.

player

Absolutely correct when stating that many maps have aesthetics precede gameplay, which garners said maps an initial wow-factor, but will very quickly end up at the bottom of map-votes (much like is the case in NS1), simply because it is not pleasant to play actual games in them.