Natural Selection 2 News Update - NS2 Build 217 ("Titanium") changelog
Flayra
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Comments
I am actually more scared playing aliens now then marines... BRRRRRRRRRR BRRRRRRRRR BRRRRRRRRRR
But what I dislikes:
- I'm not a big fan of the mini map though, I do understand the background is getting blurry but please dont blur the "map itself" when pressing c. Needs to be more shaper and highlighted. No soft gray, Soft gray doesnt fit blurry background. :(
- Also when marine commander drop structors, you'll see the blue animation of the structor, once you as a player click on it it just rechange animation to orginal colour. From super bright to normal colour in one micro second. It's not nice in visual perspactive :(
- The button of the screen when a hive is under attack or command station, you can't barely see the text, also a very ugly animation with text. Hopefully uwe improves that upon release.
- No more marine health bars off comm view :(
- Once entered a server, I cannot look in the server browser for other servers :( :( :(
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Great!!!
Didn't get less than 35 FPS for 10 minutes (well some mili-second-freezes like always) and ruled the server - then the server crashed. HUGE performance increase for me. I hope you have more ideas like physics changes.
THEY'LL DO IT.
EDIT: Had to play at 15 FPS before the patch
I am happy that the "tooltips" can be turned off so I can stop complaining about them.
Exosuit is kickass and way better/cooler than I thought it would be.
I am unsure about having the exosuit beying Pres, I think the idea of a commander dropping an Exosuit with Tres, having players build it, and then having a designated driver would offer a lot more strategy and teamwork. But I can understand the more "noob friendly" way of having players just buy them. I just don't like how half the team saves up their money and as soon as exosuits are researched you have this surge of 10 exosuits at once.
Also I think the exosuit would be alot cooler if marines could enter and exit them, say hop out, and repair it up yourself while being vulnerable, it would add alot of gameplay elements.
Please work more on this and put emphasis on it, like the singleplayer in Half-Life 1 and 2. Make it tasteful and impactful, and it will sell the game to some people on its own.
Not joking here.
<!--quoteo(post=1967848:date=Aug 28 2012, 08:55 PM:name=antacid)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (antacid @ Aug 28 2012, 08:55 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1967848"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I am not a fan of the removal of marine health bars from command view. Those were critical to seeing unit hp as they are in all RTS's.
I am happy that the "tooltips" can be turned off so I can stop complaining about them.
Exosuit is kickass and way better/cooler than I thought it would be.
I am unsure about having the exosuit beying Pres, I think the idea of a commander dropping an Exosuit with Tres, having players build it, and then having a designated driver would offer a lot more strategy and teamwork. But I can understand the more "noob friendly" way of having players just buy them. I just don't like how half the team saves up their money and as soon as exosuits are researched you have this surge of 10 exosuits at once.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Keep in mind this is patch day and everyone is wanting to play exos, I imagine people will be more willing to buy other stuff as time goes on.
Just played a game where that happened and everyone bought exosuits and went after the hive.. they had 2 hives and took down our base before we could even start going to the 2nd hive. People will stop waiting for exosuits once the "omg exosuits" hype wears down and they will start working as a team.
Cannot beacon an exosuit= fail if everyone gets one.
It's hard to judge the exosuits at the moment. Everyone's hoarding resources to try it out. I doubt you'll see this kind of hoarding 2 weeks from now, because they seem to require a lot of marine support via welding.
- "pheremones" and "marine vision" isn't very good, it's worse than the previous "green goo" parasite because now everthing is highlighted the same colour, and there is way too much clutter because of this, at least you can turn off the terrible hive/cc highlight now.
- not sure if new commander hud is an improvement, everything is transparent and the same colour.
- good balance changes, good to be able to do things without adrenaline now.
- I still get stuck in places on maps.
- update news page has quite a lot of formatting/spelling errors!
Is it now intended to stack up negative vertical velocity so you are not able to chainjump on walls and built up speed properly?
At least It feels like that, the harder i try to walljump without touching the ground in between - the harder the game wants to smash me back on the ground and not allow me to do so properly.
It's hard to judge the exosuits at the moment. Everyone's hoarding resources to try it out. I doubt you'll see this kind of hoarding 2 weeks from now, because they seem to require a lot of marine support via welding.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I welded 2 skulks to death while repairing an exo in combat!
Another thing, I don't know if it's a feature or a bug, but I got a tooltip help for the secondary skulk fire (the parasite) that didn't went away. It became a problem because it's a rather large human silhouette and it became intrusive.
My aim as marine seems to have improved, but now I'm even worse as a skulk. I can't think why.
My only gripe is on something that isn't there: Surround Sound support.
Where is it? Will it make it to 1.0?
Another thing, I don't know if it's a feature or a bug, but I got a tooltip help for the secondary skulk fire (the parasite) that didn't went away. It became a problem because it's a rather large human silhouette and it became intrusive.
My aim as marine seems to have improved, but now I'm even worse as a skulk. I can't think why.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Your skulk performance may change because:
1. Skulk bite hit area changed.
2. All the marines will become vastly better at aiming in this patch due to FPS increases.
Haven't played the build just yet - have only read the notes. Isn't the default key for voice-chat Alt? Whilst Alt-click is better than shift-click, this should be changed to something different to avoid voice-chat being triggered everytime a commander wants to alert a location. Or perhaps change the default voice-chat button to something other than Alt.
<ul><li>Automatic medpack/ammo requests bombards/overwhelms the commander. The requests can come from marines standing beside an armoury or even completely surrounded by aliens (about to die, no matter what). It just puts more burden on the commander who already has the most intense jobs in the game.</li><li>Removing marine health/armour info from the commander's view. Was this intentional (a balance change)? It also makes the Cmdr's job harder.</li><li>Map alerts. I found myself triggering a lot of alerts by mistake while trying to use the voice chat. Can we go back to shift+click? Was there a reason that needed to be changed?</li></ul>
Jetpack going up or even backwards should use more fuel than jetpack going forwards - this makes dodgying manouvers expensive fuel wise without punishing marines that want to fly quickly from location to location
BTW AWESOME PATCH! :)
my only feedback so far this build (non bug related): larger player counts are showing the 3 person spawn queue not scaling with player counts and thus biased in favor of marines.
Cargo hive is a disaster; jetpack heaven. Sub-sector is almost as bad; very little cover and easy to spawncamp.
Desperately need some way to turn the "dynamic" music off. That is annoying the hell out of me.
As usual, need to play alot more to give solid feedback on changes all with the exception of this one
<i>-Increased Drifter health to 300 (from 100).</i>
I can tell you right now this is incredibly game breaking. A certain strategy on aus servers is now OP perhaps to the point of exploit.
+1 - I kept on thinking people were stupidly spamming the system until I realized that hitting Q is an automatic ammo request. I actually liked 216's removal of the system, it forced people to use comms to describe what they needed and where.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Removing marine health/armour info from the commander's view. Was this intentional (a balance change)? It also makes the Cmdr's job harder.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
+1 - coupled with the above, I now don't know how many med packs or ammo packs are required to be dropped. I wish there could be small tickers next to each marine's name tag (yes! I like this) that indicate their health level, armor level, and ammo level.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Map alerts. I found myself triggering a lot of alerts by mistake while trying to use the voice chat. Can we go back to shift+click? Was there a reason that needed to be changed?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
+1 - happened in every game I played today. I would almost make it that you can only use the alert function inside the mini map. Half the time I try to use it on the field it doesn't work, anyway.
<ul><li>General FPS is higher (walking around with no action) but my performance tanks when I see an enemy and have to shoot which as you can imagine instantly ruins a lot of potential enjoyment for me.</li><li>Player feedback for objectives is better (way-pointing and teammate locations), but at times too much information I feel is being displayed (attack/repair/build etc). I was also seeing red hive markers through walls? I can tell you from experience if you ever show a red icon to a player who does not know what it is, they will either A) shoot it, B) run towards it. </li><li>I got lost quite a bit in Veil even though I know the original like the back of my hand. Some vents were too twisty/turny and were very confusing.</li><li>Jetpack control feels really good, but the recharge on the burn felt a little too restrictive.</li><li>I still hate power nodes, I hate them so much I'm too polite to tell you how much I hate that "feature" in NS2.</li><li>Arcs are still useless, unless you create a dozen of them and send them on their way. Flayra if you are reading this, sieges worked perfect in NS1, you did not need to change them.</li><li>Still find the majority of the new re-searchable upgrades pretty unnessesary and only adding confusion to the game when you require a certain number of com stations to use them.</li><li>Exo-suits as I understand it just went in this build so I'll reserve judgement, but they seemed quite OP given they only needed 2 comm chairs (which is really confusing btw).</li></ul>
In a perfect world, I wish I could play NS2 without power nodes, sieges instead of arcs, less re-searchable upgrades/abilities and fix the remaining performance issues. I'll try again at release and keep my fingers crossed.
The only sound I get is one of the common ones, in "z" or "x" menu. :(
By the way, excellent update, I am really enjoying it
Dual minigun exosuit should require 3 tech points.
Edit: Lerk still god awful. Now that spores require 2 hives, give them back ranged spores.