After a long hiatus...
[R8]DJBourgeoisie![[R8]DJBourgeoisie](https://forumstest.unknownworlds.com/uploads/ipb/nav-62176.jpg)
Join Date: 2007-09-05 Member: 62176Members
Join Date: 2007-09-05 Member: 62176Members
<div class="IPBDescription">My feedback for UWE on gorilla build</div>After a long hiatus from playing NS2 (roughly 8 months) I decided to install and see what the current state of the game was like. I'm going to break down my feedback into positive and negative feedback and offer my own ideas and suggestions. Apologies in advance for the fragmented thoughts I will try to keep them somewhat organized.
Positives...
The first thing I noticed was the game seemed to be running much better than previous experiences which were very encouraging. The game visually looked better, I guess the addition of atmospheric effects were what I noticed being different? Most if not all of the movements felt better than before, and that gliding feeling seemed significantly reduced from what I remember. Weapons and shooting on the marines team seems to be better and my shots seem to be registering better. The maps seem nicely detailed and functional, though most of my games I found myself playing on the same map over and over (was not mineshaft or the first map in early betas) so I cannot comment on all of the levels. The sound design seems good and I liked that I could now hear footsteps. Overall I felt this build was much closer to that classic NS feel than any of my previous experiences in NS2. The alien commander felt much more responsive and drifters did not bug out like previous experiences. I could place rt's and structures pretty easily. Marines felt really solid from everything with weapons to their tech tree, this felt like the better executed team in terms of polish and accessibility imo.
Negatives...
The tech tree on the alien side is extremely confusing at first glance, I think this is one thing that has gotten worse since older builds in terms of accessibility. While the maps are visually nice, I was not able to tell what doors were able to be opened and which ones were not and found this confusing when trying to navigate the space. Please do a better job letting players know what doors can be opened and which ones are inaccessible by improving the visual language. Placing alien pestules was confusing, sometimes I could not place them even if it was inside a ring that appeared and other times I could, not sure if this is a bug or me just not understanding some hidden rule when placing them. I played and died <b>A LOT</b> as the lerk. Generally speaking I wish the lerk in NS2 was more like the lerk in NS1. The spikes are so inaccurate from a distance thus it sort of defeats the purpose of it being a ranged attack. Spores seemed to deal little if any damage from what I could tell and having to use them in a cqb situation felt like suicide (and often was). The lerk no longer feels like a harass and support unit, I just don't like the current implementation of that role at all. The fade seemed pretty good if not a bit overpowered with invincible blink. If I had one major complaint it is with the vision mode when blinking, I had a really hard time actually seeing where I was trying to go because of all the screen distortion. The gorge, I just found it boring, with not enough to do pure and simple, same as the alien commander I just found myself bored most of the time. Skulks while improved much from earlier experiences, still felt too slow. If I have some option for celerity it is not obvious to me, and thus I felt like I did not have a chance in most situations even with the returned ability to leap in mid flight. Aliens felt severely handicapped when spawning away from a hive that was under attack with no way of getting there quickly, probably my biggest complaint about aliens atm. The endgame problems of NS1 seem to have remained unfixed.
My suggestions...
NS2 has become a much more complicated game than it's predecessor for a few reasons, the first being the addition of an alien commander. The second, additional structures for aliens and the pestule system allowing aliens to only build on infestation. My suggestion is to return the tech tree for aliens back to a simpler state, the extra buildings for upgrades seem unnecessary. NS1 had 3 tech tree options (not going to explain you know them obviously), why stray from that? Crag = defense, Shade = sensory, Whip = movement. I like the alien commander for communication reasons but I don't at the same time because it takes away from the gorge heavily and it just is not all that fun to do. My suggestion is to give builder abilities back to the gorge, let the gorge build all the structures and spread infestation. Sure you would lose that communication ability of a commander, but scouting by skulks and such worked just fine in NS1 so why can't it work in NS2? Don't get me wrong I know the alien commander is a hot topic and has been for a long time, but it offers very little usefulness and those abilities are and can be done by other players if you let them. The alien commander and gorge need to unite in some fashion, I just do not see the need for both as they currently exist. The lerk in NS1 worked great, why try to fix something when it isn't broken?
Closing thoughts...
I loved NS, I like NS2, it has come a long way since I last played. Do I wish you had just ported NS to Spark engine? Absolutely not, but I would like to see the problems of NS1 fixed in NS2 before you pile on a bunch of new features, in particular the endgame and resource model. It seems like your game got more complicated with the addition of new buildings/features and accessibility has actually gotten worse because of it. I am having hard time seeing how new players are going to be able to pick this game up and not be completely overwhelmed with the complexity of it all when a seasoned NS1 player like myself is confused/frustrated by things. I would recommend you get a fresh eyes test by literally pulling in students from a local college game design class, sit them down and simply watch them play your game after giving them a <b>BRIEF</b> overview of your game. That is probably the most valuable, informative and definitely the most honest feedback you can get and will bring to light a whole slew of issues you likely did not even know existed because most testers already understand the NS world and mechanics. I wish UWE all the best I know you guys bust your asses and want to make a great game, as do I.
Positives...
The first thing I noticed was the game seemed to be running much better than previous experiences which were very encouraging. The game visually looked better, I guess the addition of atmospheric effects were what I noticed being different? Most if not all of the movements felt better than before, and that gliding feeling seemed significantly reduced from what I remember. Weapons and shooting on the marines team seems to be better and my shots seem to be registering better. The maps seem nicely detailed and functional, though most of my games I found myself playing on the same map over and over (was not mineshaft or the first map in early betas) so I cannot comment on all of the levels. The sound design seems good and I liked that I could now hear footsteps. Overall I felt this build was much closer to that classic NS feel than any of my previous experiences in NS2. The alien commander felt much more responsive and drifters did not bug out like previous experiences. I could place rt's and structures pretty easily. Marines felt really solid from everything with weapons to their tech tree, this felt like the better executed team in terms of polish and accessibility imo.
Negatives...
The tech tree on the alien side is extremely confusing at first glance, I think this is one thing that has gotten worse since older builds in terms of accessibility. While the maps are visually nice, I was not able to tell what doors were able to be opened and which ones were not and found this confusing when trying to navigate the space. Please do a better job letting players know what doors can be opened and which ones are inaccessible by improving the visual language. Placing alien pestules was confusing, sometimes I could not place them even if it was inside a ring that appeared and other times I could, not sure if this is a bug or me just not understanding some hidden rule when placing them. I played and died <b>A LOT</b> as the lerk. Generally speaking I wish the lerk in NS2 was more like the lerk in NS1. The spikes are so inaccurate from a distance thus it sort of defeats the purpose of it being a ranged attack. Spores seemed to deal little if any damage from what I could tell and having to use them in a cqb situation felt like suicide (and often was). The lerk no longer feels like a harass and support unit, I just don't like the current implementation of that role at all. The fade seemed pretty good if not a bit overpowered with invincible blink. If I had one major complaint it is with the vision mode when blinking, I had a really hard time actually seeing where I was trying to go because of all the screen distortion. The gorge, I just found it boring, with not enough to do pure and simple, same as the alien commander I just found myself bored most of the time. Skulks while improved much from earlier experiences, still felt too slow. If I have some option for celerity it is not obvious to me, and thus I felt like I did not have a chance in most situations even with the returned ability to leap in mid flight. Aliens felt severely handicapped when spawning away from a hive that was under attack with no way of getting there quickly, probably my biggest complaint about aliens atm. The endgame problems of NS1 seem to have remained unfixed.
My suggestions...
NS2 has become a much more complicated game than it's predecessor for a few reasons, the first being the addition of an alien commander. The second, additional structures for aliens and the pestule system allowing aliens to only build on infestation. My suggestion is to return the tech tree for aliens back to a simpler state, the extra buildings for upgrades seem unnecessary. NS1 had 3 tech tree options (not going to explain you know them obviously), why stray from that? Crag = defense, Shade = sensory, Whip = movement. I like the alien commander for communication reasons but I don't at the same time because it takes away from the gorge heavily and it just is not all that fun to do. My suggestion is to give builder abilities back to the gorge, let the gorge build all the structures and spread infestation. Sure you would lose that communication ability of a commander, but scouting by skulks and such worked just fine in NS1 so why can't it work in NS2? Don't get me wrong I know the alien commander is a hot topic and has been for a long time, but it offers very little usefulness and those abilities are and can be done by other players if you let them. The alien commander and gorge need to unite in some fashion, I just do not see the need for both as they currently exist. The lerk in NS1 worked great, why try to fix something when it isn't broken?
Closing thoughts...
I loved NS, I like NS2, it has come a long way since I last played. Do I wish you had just ported NS to Spark engine? Absolutely not, but I would like to see the problems of NS1 fixed in NS2 before you pile on a bunch of new features, in particular the endgame and resource model. It seems like your game got more complicated with the addition of new buildings/features and accessibility has actually gotten worse because of it. I am having hard time seeing how new players are going to be able to pick this game up and not be completely overwhelmed with the complexity of it all when a seasoned NS1 player like myself is confused/frustrated by things. I would recommend you get a fresh eyes test by literally pulling in students from a local college game design class, sit them down and simply watch them play your game after giving them a <b>BRIEF</b> overview of your game. That is probably the most valuable, informative and definitely the most honest feedback you can get and will bring to light a whole slew of issues you likely did not even know existed because most testers already understand the NS world and mechanics. I wish UWE all the best I know you guys bust your asses and want to make a great game, as do I.
Comments
Skulks gain a huge amount of speed from combining wall jumps and leaps, but I agree with you that the lerk is currently underpowered. I don't think that them being beefier like in last patch is the way to fix it, but all of their attacks are focussed on doing the most damage when closest to their targets which defeats the purpose of them being the squishy, ranged and airborne alien class.
I like the idea of giving some people without any form of previous NS experience some playtime with the game and seeing what they figure out on their own, but I don't think games need to be stripped of all outwards complexity to be popular and great products. Look at MoBA's and the Starcraft multiplayer scene for examples.
But i have 2 big concerns with NS2. The aliens are to melee focused, and they are to restricted by the fact that they need several hives for higher lifeforms. Marines can be pushed backed and no lose ground, but when aliens lose a hive their pretty much screwed.
But tbh it feels a little bit too much like NS1 on the marine side now, as a commander rounds have game dynamics like NS1 with the added bonus of MAC's and moible sieges.
Right now you can basicly win a round singlehandly as a commander even if no marine in your team would do something usefull but distract the aliens. That feels kinda... strange? Just doesn't feel like the MAC's add anything really too new or usefull to the marine gameplay right now.
And i also agree about alot of the things on the alien side, the 3 extra chambers feel useless (but i like their looks inside the hive!) and the whole metagame of the commander co-working with the gorge just doesn't really pay off that well currently.
I can see what they are aiming at: A trade-off between alien comm and gorge in energy and personal res.
With 1-2 hives the alien commander is often limited by hive energy and not team resources, if he doesn't have gorges expanding the infestation for him in a usefull way. You usally have to spent your hive energy on repairing and expanding the infestation and while you do that you just collect too many team resources.
But you can only effectively spent team resources by sacrificing drifters, but these cost a ton of hive energy. So the alien commander allways has to depend on usefull gorges to get anywhere and gorges in turn have to spent all their personal res in a pretty boring and (for them) useless way by expanding the infestation with their personal res.
For the alien commanders it's a real micro nightmare, for the gorge it's boring and overall it doesn't really play or feel well.
Because what usually happens is this: Alien commander spents his first energy expanding in a different direction then his gorges do. And the gorges get annoyed that their infestation doesn't work because the commander is allways busy somewhere else with a TON of micro.
Right now i'm really tired and haven't played the current build enough to come up with a solution for this, but it feels like there is a pretty good and easy solution hidden in there that keeps the gorge and the alien commander without going back to basic "NS1 gameplay".
Because that would be kinda sad, the dynamic infestation adds a really cool feature to the alien side that could lend itself to some unique commander-gorge-team interaction. After all this is NS2 and UWE allways said "NS2 is not supposed to be just NS HD" ;)
Btw: The problem you encountered with placing pestules is that they also require line of sight to each other, i also found this to be very frustrating and this leads to ALOT of issues in dynamic infestation placement for commander and gorge.
I know the line of sight requirement is in there for balance reasons but tbh i think removing it would add to alien gemaplay in a huge way without imbalancing dynamic infestation too much.
i made a graphic to help explain:
<img src="http://i40.tinypic.com/11j22jr.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
a cyst can only be r distance from a hive or another cyst. but the r doesn't extend through walls or other obstacles (notably, the stairs and catwalk in atrium start). therefore, the cyst has to path around every single obstacle, until distance r is reached. beyond that, the cyst is unable to be placed even if the graphic shows that it should be able to go there.
Yeah, hopefully when/if the Cyst tendrils get implemented, it'll show on build preview.
Also just correcting you OP, the whip is not the counterpart to the MC in NS1, the whip is more similar to the OC but with some tech. NS2's MC counterpart is called the 'Shift' and is as of yet not implemented.
Edit: also with the cyst issue, yeah it's the range of the cysts from eachother, once you do it enough you'll get the hang of where they need to go, but it's definately not intuitive.
It's the same as in NS1...
You can still evolve inside vents and other places, but compared to NS1 it's quite more difficult because spark feels alot more "clippy" then goldsrc does with NS1.
But forcing people to find a flat surface to evolve works better then having tons of people getting stuck in the map geometry when they evolve to bigger lifeforms like fade or onos.
PS In all of my attempts to evolve into a gorge/lerk in vents or up on pipes etc above the ground failed with the message "you must be on the ground to evolve."
Actually I'm fairly certain it is nothing like NS1. In NS1 it checked what life form you were evolving to before allowing it, as an example you could never evolve into an onos in a vent but every other class of alien could because they could also move thru vents. Vents don't feel nearly as integral the core gameplay of NS2 like they did in NS1 and I figure this change in spawning logic is a big part of it.
PS In all of my attempts to evolve into a gorge/lerk in vents or up on pipes etc above the ground failed with the message "you must be on the ground to evolve."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You just have to press the "crouch" button why trying to evolve. If you dont have enough space around you a other message will be prompted. What sucks more is that you can get stuck in vent exits or in vents at cables, so you cant get out and wasted 10+ res. For example in summit the 2 vent exits in glass halway to the data core side, you get stuck there as a gorge when you try to get out.
Skulks not knowing what parasite does, or gorges bilebombing marines is pretty common too.