NS2 A Disappointment, Or More Simply Put, I Regret The Purchase
Maverickk
Join Date: 2006-12-03 Member: 58857Members
Join Date: 2006-12-03 Member: 58857Members
I've debated making this thread for days now. I kept hoping "well if I give UWE time, maybe they'll patch things. Maybe things will get fixed". Alas, seven days release time has shown me everything I need to know.
I'm not new to the NS scene. I played NS1 off and on for years now. A huge lover of the modding community, and sheer customization that was possible. So color me surprised when NS2 was released last week, I purchase it day one and jump into a game that as far as I can tell is almost nothing like NS1 other than a few audio and visual assets.
I know UWE is a small team, but my gods what happened to you guys over the last ten years since NS1? People come and go, I get that. But least <i>some</i> of your original design team must be left over, right? <i>right?</i>. The core gameplay changes alone would be enough to make fans twinge but you couple that with the abysmal system performance for A LOT of people and like me you begin to wonder; where did UWE begin to go wrong?
Just a few things I'm curious about;
Why do the Kharaa now require a Commander? The strength of the Alien faction was always the unique sort of every-man-for-themselves approach to working as a team. Wanted defenses, you had to be Gorge. Wanted tanky destruction you went Onos. Now they require a Commander to put down creep to expand a base? (Yes it's creep, at least before it could have been a vague tongue in cheek homage to the Starcraft franchise but now we're just inching over that line). Now they require Eggs to spawn? Was someone at UWE high the day they decided to "revamp" the Kharaa into this ######ized version of what it once was? The Frontiersmen at least get a couple new weapons, Aliens get what exactly that's new for mutations? The same five as NS1..
Why do the Kharaa get this epic semi-infrared vision that makes things a lot easier to see, with a built in short range wallhack-like see through ability as well? I know the Rines' get a minimap on the HUD but considering it'd be super easy to mod one in for the Kharaa this just gives them a hard coded in-game unmodded ability that is a bit overpowered. Especially now that the other side is dependent upon "power" to fuel every single thing they build so knocking out power makes them use their relatively weak flashlights compared to pretty much heat seeking nightvision? (Yea, it shows random unimportant things like fans but still its by far over powered).
On the flip side
Why do Frontiersmen now have a dual resource system? Not only can the Commander spawn weapons and items for players but the player can "purchase" these items? In theory, on paper, this sounds great right? If the team is low on Resources, spending them on one or two good weapons could be a bad choice but if the player spends his or her own Resources it could be good. Sounds great in concept, much like certain political systems in the real world that sound good on paper but in practice are not. From all the playing I've done, yes in "Pubs" not in super efficient omgleetz organized tournament play, I've always encountered "stingy" Commanders, whom won't give the team weapons even when we're sitting on a surplus of resources, thus requiring the player to spend their Resources for upgrades. And seeing as how you earn Resources on a personal level, at a much slower rate than a Resource Node could churn out, spending that X Resources on a Shotty (that you drop when you die..) pretty much depletes a players resources faster than you can re-earn. Considering the bulk of the game's playerbase will be people playing on pubs and not the uber skilled organized players whom are on ladders or in tourneys, you have to look at it like a pub perspective. Not all Commanders will be good, obviously. But dipping into a personal Resource that is earned at a much slower rate is not a good design choice.
Why do the Frontiersmen get one new weapon, that appears to have replaced another? The flame thrower is great and all, but even firing it in short controlled bursts, makes tracking a skulk with celerity difficult as your field of view is momentarily taken up by flames. Why did this replace the HMG? I'd trade in the Flame thrower any day of the week for the more powerful HMG, even with it's slower reload times (which was the trade off for the LMG).
Why are the Frontiersmen now completely power dependent? As said compared to Kharaa, a skulk or two taking out a power node can completely HOSE a Marine team. Why? Because it all becomes pitch black and even with "emergency lights" on, is still virtually dark. Maybe if the Marine flashlight was much much brighter or offered a wider range of illuminating the area I wouldn't have a problem. But the small cone of light a single Marine can generate compared to how insanely fast the various Alien mutations can move make being power dependent such a huge nerf to that entire side of gameplay. Even with Aliens requiring Eggs, and Cysts to respawn and advance on the map, their nightvision and short range wallhack vision really totally outweighs the negatives so much to the point that the Marines are at a huge disadvantage right out of the gate.
And performance, for either side, is abysmal. Read the tech support subforum. There are people out there with massively powerful desktop pc's, that even being custom built would rank up in the thousands of dollars to build, are getting horrible performance. We're talking people with 4.4ghz hexacore CPU's, SLI GPU's (such as Nvidia 680's or 90's), 16+ GB DDR3 ram, water cooling all that snazzy stuff getting 30 or less FPS during any part of gameplay. And it's not just "a few", TONS of people with high end systems have the same or similar issues. It's all over the Steam forums, all over reddit, even here. I'm sure UWE worked hard on the "Spark" Engine but at this point your choice to move from the Source engine was a poor choice, very poor. It may not have the latest and greatest eye candy like the Cry3 Engine but some modern Source games like Left 4 Dead 2 can still look good on all high settings. Was it a monetary issue? UWE couldn't afford to license the Source engine? As a small team you thought it better to go build an engine from the ground up?
And who's genius idea on the UWE team was it to tie in the game's built in voice comm chat to the same sound level slider? Again, organized people will be using their own voip service like Ventrilo, Teamspeak or Mumble. But since again the bulk of your player base are pub players, it really helps if you can hear your Commander give orders. In the middle of a fire fight, with guns blazing, aliens making all their creepy sound effects, hearing the Commander order you to fall back can be next to impossible.
And that really leads me to think that within seven days, UWE has dropped the ball. We've had one patch in that time, that didn't really fix much. Soooo many people have some form of performance issue, and we've yet to see really ANYTHING in terms of communication from the UWE team in the tech support subforum. There's a few sticky threads on common issues people are having but at this point someone from UWE publicly saying "ok we see X Y and Z are issues we're working on them" would go so so much in their favor but all we see are one or two of the player testers just telling people to post their log files and such (which really, uploading a 50MB file as a forum attachment is getting a bit out of hand. Pretty much all of us are broadband users but not everyone's ISP, which may be their ONLY option for an ISP, have unlimited data plans so asking people to upload a file that can be large is not good. I believe one users log file was over 100MB...).
So for years, I've looked forward to NS2. Every now and then I'd get an email from UWE pointing me to new screen shots, or a new video showing off this or that. I was eager for it. I loved NS1, if you looked at my Xfire profile I played close to 500+ hours of it (logged time) over the years. NS2 has been a huge disappointment. If I could get Steam to refund me, I would. But Steam does not do refunds. So I guess I'm S.O.L for the $30 I spent.
Caveat Emptor.
I'm not new to the NS scene. I played NS1 off and on for years now. A huge lover of the modding community, and sheer customization that was possible. So color me surprised when NS2 was released last week, I purchase it day one and jump into a game that as far as I can tell is almost nothing like NS1 other than a few audio and visual assets.
I know UWE is a small team, but my gods what happened to you guys over the last ten years since NS1? People come and go, I get that. But least <i>some</i> of your original design team must be left over, right? <i>right?</i>. The core gameplay changes alone would be enough to make fans twinge but you couple that with the abysmal system performance for A LOT of people and like me you begin to wonder; where did UWE begin to go wrong?
Just a few things I'm curious about;
Why do the Kharaa now require a Commander? The strength of the Alien faction was always the unique sort of every-man-for-themselves approach to working as a team. Wanted defenses, you had to be Gorge. Wanted tanky destruction you went Onos. Now they require a Commander to put down creep to expand a base? (Yes it's creep, at least before it could have been a vague tongue in cheek homage to the Starcraft franchise but now we're just inching over that line). Now they require Eggs to spawn? Was someone at UWE high the day they decided to "revamp" the Kharaa into this ######ized version of what it once was? The Frontiersmen at least get a couple new weapons, Aliens get what exactly that's new for mutations? The same five as NS1..
Why do the Kharaa get this epic semi-infrared vision that makes things a lot easier to see, with a built in short range wallhack-like see through ability as well? I know the Rines' get a minimap on the HUD but considering it'd be super easy to mod one in for the Kharaa this just gives them a hard coded in-game unmodded ability that is a bit overpowered. Especially now that the other side is dependent upon "power" to fuel every single thing they build so knocking out power makes them use their relatively weak flashlights compared to pretty much heat seeking nightvision? (Yea, it shows random unimportant things like fans but still its by far over powered).
On the flip side
Why do Frontiersmen now have a dual resource system? Not only can the Commander spawn weapons and items for players but the player can "purchase" these items? In theory, on paper, this sounds great right? If the team is low on Resources, spending them on one or two good weapons could be a bad choice but if the player spends his or her own Resources it could be good. Sounds great in concept, much like certain political systems in the real world that sound good on paper but in practice are not. From all the playing I've done, yes in "Pubs" not in super efficient omgleetz organized tournament play, I've always encountered "stingy" Commanders, whom won't give the team weapons even when we're sitting on a surplus of resources, thus requiring the player to spend their Resources for upgrades. And seeing as how you earn Resources on a personal level, at a much slower rate than a Resource Node could churn out, spending that X Resources on a Shotty (that you drop when you die..) pretty much depletes a players resources faster than you can re-earn. Considering the bulk of the game's playerbase will be people playing on pubs and not the uber skilled organized players whom are on ladders or in tourneys, you have to look at it like a pub perspective. Not all Commanders will be good, obviously. But dipping into a personal Resource that is earned at a much slower rate is not a good design choice.
Why do the Frontiersmen get one new weapon, that appears to have replaced another? The flame thrower is great and all, but even firing it in short controlled bursts, makes tracking a skulk with celerity difficult as your field of view is momentarily taken up by flames. Why did this replace the HMG? I'd trade in the Flame thrower any day of the week for the more powerful HMG, even with it's slower reload times (which was the trade off for the LMG).
Why are the Frontiersmen now completely power dependent? As said compared to Kharaa, a skulk or two taking out a power node can completely HOSE a Marine team. Why? Because it all becomes pitch black and even with "emergency lights" on, is still virtually dark. Maybe if the Marine flashlight was much much brighter or offered a wider range of illuminating the area I wouldn't have a problem. But the small cone of light a single Marine can generate compared to how insanely fast the various Alien mutations can move make being power dependent such a huge nerf to that entire side of gameplay. Even with Aliens requiring Eggs, and Cysts to respawn and advance on the map, their nightvision and short range wallhack vision really totally outweighs the negatives so much to the point that the Marines are at a huge disadvantage right out of the gate.
And performance, for either side, is abysmal. Read the tech support subforum. There are people out there with massively powerful desktop pc's, that even being custom built would rank up in the thousands of dollars to build, are getting horrible performance. We're talking people with 4.4ghz hexacore CPU's, SLI GPU's (such as Nvidia 680's or 90's), 16+ GB DDR3 ram, water cooling all that snazzy stuff getting 30 or less FPS during any part of gameplay. And it's not just "a few", TONS of people with high end systems have the same or similar issues. It's all over the Steam forums, all over reddit, even here. I'm sure UWE worked hard on the "Spark" Engine but at this point your choice to move from the Source engine was a poor choice, very poor. It may not have the latest and greatest eye candy like the Cry3 Engine but some modern Source games like Left 4 Dead 2 can still look good on all high settings. Was it a monetary issue? UWE couldn't afford to license the Source engine? As a small team you thought it better to go build an engine from the ground up?
And who's genius idea on the UWE team was it to tie in the game's built in voice comm chat to the same sound level slider? Again, organized people will be using their own voip service like Ventrilo, Teamspeak or Mumble. But since again the bulk of your player base are pub players, it really helps if you can hear your Commander give orders. In the middle of a fire fight, with guns blazing, aliens making all their creepy sound effects, hearing the Commander order you to fall back can be next to impossible.
And that really leads me to think that within seven days, UWE has dropped the ball. We've had one patch in that time, that didn't really fix much. Soooo many people have some form of performance issue, and we've yet to see really ANYTHING in terms of communication from the UWE team in the tech support subforum. There's a few sticky threads on common issues people are having but at this point someone from UWE publicly saying "ok we see X Y and Z are issues we're working on them" would go so so much in their favor but all we see are one or two of the player testers just telling people to post their log files and such (which really, uploading a 50MB file as a forum attachment is getting a bit out of hand. Pretty much all of us are broadband users but not everyone's ISP, which may be their ONLY option for an ISP, have unlimited data plans so asking people to upload a file that can be large is not good. I believe one users log file was over 100MB...).
So for years, I've looked forward to NS2. Every now and then I'd get an email from UWE pointing me to new screen shots, or a new video showing off this or that. I was eager for it. I loved NS1, if you looked at my Xfire profile I played close to 500+ hours of it (logged time) over the years. NS2 has been a huge disappointment. If I could get Steam to refund me, I would. But Steam does not do refunds. So I guess I'm S.O.L for the $30 I spent.
Caveat Emptor.
Comments
/Thread
These people can play NS2C. But the rest of us are going to be playing NS2.
true story, look at arma/arma2 ;p
People are feelin it.
I'm going to be enjoying the game.
Feel bad for ya bud
When I buy a finished game, I expect it to be finished. Just saying. Your responses are making it seem like this guy is whining about bugs in beta or something... he's not. He bought the released product and was turned away by how unfinished it seems. It's incredibly common. <strike>That's why out of 144,000 players, there have only been 7,135 games. 7,135 games averages out to everyone who has a copy has played one round on a 20 slot server. That's pretty bad, considering the game is built around 16 slot servers and most people that play, play more than one game.</strike>
*edit*
ignore that terrible attempt at doing math that i just made. apparently i can't even read, let alone come up with equations to figure this ###### out XD
You're right. Customers are not entitled to a game without performance issues on release date.
Hell, I think NS2 would be considered great compared to others. Hell, I remember Battlefield 3's launch... UGH. Or dare I say it.. BRINK.
It happens on the PC, since we have a variety of hardware configurations... regardless of the game. The only games that do not have these issues are developers who use older game engines or bought well known game engines that had most of the kinks worked out... but even then, bugs and performance issues are still around.
So next time you buy a PC game, stop and think... ask yourself if you should wait until a few patches down the line.
Aliens have the same thing. Commanders can turn any egg into a specific kind for you to evolve into.
<!--quoteo(post=2016270:date=Nov 8 2012, 06:36 PM:name=Maverickk)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Maverickk @ Nov 8 2012, 06:36 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2016270"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why do the Kharaa get this epic semi-infrared vision that makes things a lot easier to see, with a built in short range wallhack-like see through ability as well? I know the Rines' get a minimap on the HUD but considering it'd be super easy to mod one in for the Kharaa this just gives them a hard coded in-game unmodded ability that is a bit overpowered.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The wall hack ability is honestly pretty worthless. It fades fast, does barely any damage, needs to hit, and can be removed a number of ways. Using it pretty much tells anyone that theres a skulk near by as well which pretty much ruins any ambush you might have planned.
<!--quoteo(post=2016270:date=Nov 8 2012, 06:36 PM:name=Maverickk)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Maverickk @ Nov 8 2012, 06:36 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2016270"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why are the Frontiersmen now completely power dependent? As said compared to Kharaa, a skulk or two taking out a power node can completely HOSE a Marine team. Why? Because it all becomes pitch black and even with "emergency lights" on, is still virtually dark.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think you simply have a dark monitor. Not knocking you or anything, but without even messing with brightness levels on my computer or the game, I can see very easily with the emergency lights on. You might want to simply turn up your brightness or something, since most people feel its actually the opposite. Rooms are way too bright.
7135 concurrent players.
there's been 75,000 games in the first week. and that's not counting the many people who have been unable to play due to server crashes, red plug issues, etc.
yup, i'm a ######.
Just my POV.
Point is,more than 2/3 of the op post might be resumed in "i don't like the desing decisions they made for NS2,so it sucks"
And it's kind of hard to argue that with anything more than "Well,you don't like it,that's your opinion,fine.Still,that is far from the game sucking"
The part about performances might be true (as a player with a Phenom 9750 i know the "25-35 fps" zone very well and even if i manage to play with it i can see how someone can have his eyes bleeding from that ) but the above part kind of detracts from the topic
These people can play NS2C. But the rest of us are going to be playing NS2.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
pretty much all that needs to be said
It's fine if you don't enjoy the game, but going with the gut-reaction that everything NS1 did was better won't help you squeeze any joy out of the game, I wish you luck in eventually finding the game enjoyable.
ALSO: yeah NS2C...
I don't really know why people are getting bad performance, I can get a constant 60 fps with the shadows and occlusion turned down, and the computer I have isn't that great (i5-2320 @ 3.0ghz, Geforce 550ti). But clearly it's a problem that's affecting some people.
Patching is great, but they didn't have to release when they did. The game probably wasn't ready for it.
NS2 should be on Source: Yes, I agree. They made a fully functional game out of GoldSrc called NS1, so NS2 on source should've been very possible, and way less expensive. They made a mistake, but there's no way they can go back from it. They're frontiersman, just a couple of guys in a basement, and when they decided that their team had the brain power to make their own engine, they decided to go all in. I would have made the same decision. It was a bad decision, but a just one. (then again I've never made a retail source mod) I figure if they went Source, they could have had the game out a year earlier, resulting in a more balanced game, less performance issues, but overall they get less money in the end because they licensed an existing engine. With the Spark engine, we've got a much higher barrier of entry than other PC games.
Now for the ones I disagree with you on. One thing to keep in mind is that the community has issues with some aspects of the game, like rushed onos eggs and how power nodes can be taken out in mere seconds, but you don't mention these. You mention entirely different things that haven't really been brought up by others. Now you're entitled to your opinion, but your opinion is very weak if you don't have others backing you on it. It also gives the impression that you haven't played as much, because A) Nostalgia clouds the mind, and you're very quick to state 500 hours in NS1 but don't state NS2, and B) You're attacking the wrong issues.
Voice Comm chat on same level as General Sound Level: Disagree? I thought there were three sliders: Sound, Music, Voice Chat volume.
Alien Commander: There's actually a poll on this at the moment, look for the thread. It's even for NS1 style gorge or NS2 style Khammander. You may not like it, but it is NOT a bad game design choice. It's a valid one. It's extremely different than NS1. I like it, and maybe with more hours of play, you'll like it too.
Alien Wallhax are OP, and power node light outage: You said they're wallhack-like, but I'm hoping you know that it doesn't actually go through any walls. You also state that it's OP. It's not OP. It's not deciding games. Onos Egg before 8 minutes is OP... but while aliens can see Marines better, they can't see them VASTLY better to the point where Marines should be complaining. Taking out a power node is a justified alien boon, once again, nobody else is complaining that it's OP, because that's not what wins games. Taking out a power node, and having all the aliens destroy everything before you can get back there, now that hurts, but it's also hard to do.
Flamethrower over HMG: I think it was good game design to add the flamethrower. It serves a different role: It takes out alien energy, lerk spores, cysts. Sure, I wish it did it's intended original design, which was burn infestation, but it's still a utility weapon. What was HMG? Oh. Just an H version of the MG. It wasn't any different, and I'd consider Level 3 LMG to be the same thing. It would be nice to make the visual jump however.
Personal Resources versus Commander Dropped Weapons: It's a valid point either way. P.Res makes it so that the commander doesn't have to drop weapons. I prefer the old way myself, but still, I think it's a valid game design decision. People HAVE argued against this in the past, so I support your hatred for this design decision.
I know some people who paid 34.99$ or even 39.99$...then poof, on release, game is 24.99$...that must hurt, 10-15$, down the drain. Of course, if you think of the free copy...that's a cheap second copy...
I didn't hear about anyone getting refunded 10$....
Oh well!
There is certainly a lot of work to be done, but I do hope that we see some serious focus on improving performance over the coming weeks.
I don't really know why people are getting bad performance, I can get a constant 60 fps with the shadows and occlusion turned down, and the computer I have isn't that great (i5-2320 @ 3.0ghz, Geforce 550ti). But clearly it's a problem that's affecting some people.
Patching is great, but they didn't have to release when they did. The game probably wasn't ready for it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Natural Selection 2 â€@NS2
Build 229 is well on its way, and contains red-plug-of-doom fixes, disconnect fixes, and a side of salad (Extra charge for the salad DLC)
Expand
There is a little bit of information out there.
I feel the same as you in regards to performance, my computer isn't the greatest yet I seem to be able to play fine. Apart from the Blue screens! Cant remember specs off the top of my head I know i Have a gtx 285 and 8 gig of ram though.
I know some people who paid 34.99$ or even 39.99$...then poof, on release, game is 24.99$...that must hurt, 10-15$, down the drain. Of course, if you think of the free copy...that's a cheap second copy...
I didn't hear about anyone getting refunded 10$....
Oh well!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Or perhaps that $10 -$15 was for their eternal gratitude
Build 229 is well on its way, and contains red-plug-of-doom fixes, disconnect fixes, and a side of salad (Extra charge for the salad DLC)
Expand
There is a little bit of information out there.
I feel the samea s you in regards to performance, my computer isn't the greatest yet I seem to be able to play fine. Apart from the Blue screens! Cant remember specs off the top of my head I know i Have a gtx 285 and 8 gig of ram though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Oh god, are the NS2 guys using twitter as their way of releasing news? They have 2 websites for this game where they could release information...
A few things are done worse than ns1...
Current balance is totally ######...
But it has players, its fun and the balance will be sorted.
they did a live Q&A on twitch a couple days ago where they talked about optimizations coming up in the next patch.
I do agree though, official statement on the news page/website/steam page would go a long way.
Update your main pages, put out Steam announcements & PATCH NOTES!
Basically I think you are knit-picking too much. just relax and enjoy the game :)
Sure NS2 isn't perfect, but I would hardly think of it as a waste of your money. Just because a few things a different, is it really stopping you from enjoying yourself?
It won't stop me from having fun.
<!--quoteo(post=2016389:date=Nov 9 2012, 02:54 PM:name=Mkilbride)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mkilbride @ Nov 9 2012, 02:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2016389"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I ###### hate Twitter. I refuse to use it.
Update your main pages, put out Steam announcements & PATCH NOTES!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The twitter feed does come through the mainpage.....whats more is you don't have to use twitter to see the messages