This game is extremely unfriendly for new players. DEVs need to address this ASAP
MrChoke
Join Date: 2012-12-13 Member: 174990Members, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2012-12-13 Member: 174990Members, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Shadow
With Christmas and all the Steam sales, we have a lot of new players. And the natural urge for a new player is to be a human holding a gun and not some species of alien totally foreign. Guess what happens when there are even a few new players on the marines versus aliens who are not new? The worst, blow-out, stupid, no fun games I have ever seen in online gaming.
I have been trying to get a handful of friends to start playing this game. I had one friend playing last night. We played 9 games as marines. We got absolutely blown out all 9 times. Most of the time the marines could not even hold an RT for more than a few seconds. Now I am not a new player. I know what the marines need to do to win. I have seen them win many times. Overall I'd say the marines win almost half the time. But when I try to look through the eyes of a new player the way I it was running last night, I would have uninstalled this game in a heartbeat. Word of mouth is very important to a game like this. I can't build a case to say tihs is a great game to my friends. After last night I am telling them I will let you know when they fix it.
I don't think it needs a major overhaul. It needs changes so that the marines do not get killed in a 1/2 a second in early game. Time and time again all I was seeing is one experienced skulk kill 1, 2, even 3 marines in a matter of a second or two. Now don't start telling me all this and that on how the marines need to aim better, stay together, yada yada yada. I know how to play. But a new player will and is getting killed time and time again as marine. And you multiply this ease of taking down 1 or more marines by one alien into the entire alien team base rushing and you get quite literally the worst gaming experience I have seen in a long long time.
Here are a few simple suggestions that I know are easy to do. Make the marines gun clips larger. Make the reload time shorter. Give him more armor at game start. There are many easy ways to adresss this. And if it throws the balance off a bit then adjust the aliens a bit if needed. But FIX THIS problem. This game is getting uninstalled left and right I am sure of it. And it doesn't deserve it. Its bad timing that Christmas came along with this problem being seen by all of these new players. All the more important to address it soon.
I have been trying to get a handful of friends to start playing this game. I had one friend playing last night. We played 9 games as marines. We got absolutely blown out all 9 times. Most of the time the marines could not even hold an RT for more than a few seconds. Now I am not a new player. I know what the marines need to do to win. I have seen them win many times. Overall I'd say the marines win almost half the time. But when I try to look through the eyes of a new player the way I it was running last night, I would have uninstalled this game in a heartbeat. Word of mouth is very important to a game like this. I can't build a case to say tihs is a great game to my friends. After last night I am telling them I will let you know when they fix it.
I don't think it needs a major overhaul. It needs changes so that the marines do not get killed in a 1/2 a second in early game. Time and time again all I was seeing is one experienced skulk kill 1, 2, even 3 marines in a matter of a second or two. Now don't start telling me all this and that on how the marines need to aim better, stay together, yada yada yada. I know how to play. But a new player will and is getting killed time and time again as marine. And you multiply this ease of taking down 1 or more marines by one alien into the entire alien team base rushing and you get quite literally the worst gaming experience I have seen in a long long time.
Here are a few simple suggestions that I know are easy to do. Make the marines gun clips larger. Make the reload time shorter. Give him more armor at game start. There are many easy ways to adresss this. And if it throws the balance off a bit then adjust the aliens a bit if needed. But FIX THIS problem. This game is getting uninstalled left and right I am sure of it. And it doesn't deserve it. Its bad timing that Christmas came along with this problem being seen by all of these new players. All the more important to address it soon.
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Comments
What could be done is make the game more intuitive and include perhaps an AI/training system to help new players have a runthrough of a "real game" before they get on the field.
But idk, it's rough for new players for sure. And I agree that it's a problem.. but not one solved by breaking the balance for competent players.
Simply, no.
The problem, as you mentioned already, is not that marines are too weak early on but that that new players get beaten up by more experienced players. Now when that is true - and it is, in fact! - then the solution cannot be to increase the armour as well of fire power of the marines because of the gap in terms of <i>skill</i>. The problem, as you've pointed out, are <b>not</b> not the marines itself because even teams, in terms of experience and skill, will probably result in a somewhat even match. Tweaking the balance for <i>all</i> players becaues new players have a hard time during their first rounds, will result in a even more broken balance for the rest of the playerbase.
If anything, give <i>rookie</i> players some sort of boost so they don't get eaten up that easily - though, I don't really like this idea at all. What new players need are more information, tips, hints, advices, maybe some sort of squad-system and simply a less frustrating start. But soften the initial experience for new players but tweaking the overall balance in their favour will result in a broken balance for everyone else. You cannot really compensate lack of skill due to balance. If I'd play say StarCraft² against an experienced player, I would get beaten up in no time. The <i>solution</i> to this problem cannot be to give my units more firepower, hp, more starting buildings, etc. but I simply have to <i>learn</i> to play the game.
If new players, especially as Marines, have most of the time no clue what to do and what the game is about in the first place, then I think that can ruin a gaming experience. The solution, as other's have mentioned it again and again, are more hints, tips, etc. for rookies - I think getting beaten up by experienced players is something everyone is, or at least should, be able to get along with when he starts to play a new game he doesn't know. What can frustrate people is, when they die and neither know why, how or for what reason. I mean, there are tutorials at Youtube but frankly, when I install a game I would be really pissed off if I had first go to Youtube to watch some videos. I want the game to explain itself to me while I play it. Currently, NaSe2 does a bad job in that aspect. Meddling around with the balance, though, won't solve the problem but just cause many more.
Ideas:
If you get killed by another player, show the player a pop-up - he hasn't anything to do while he respawns anyway - where you get information about the weapon or lifeform that killed you. You furthermore become tiny advices how to cope with that weapon or lifeform. If you see a structure you get a little in-game pop-up that briefly explains the function of this structure, etc. That game simply needs more explanations. You cannot expect new players to browse through Wikis, watch Youtube videos or keep asking other players.
I remember an old NS1 School initiative, learning evenings sessions ;-)
I have been trying to get a handful of friends to start playing this game. I had one friend playing last night. We played 9 games as marines. We got absolutely blown out all 9 times. Most of the time the marines could not even hold an RT for more than a few seconds. Now I am not a new player. I know what the marines need to do to win. I have seen them win many times. Overall I'd say the marines win almost half the time. But when I try to look through the eyes of a new player the way I it was running last night, I would have uninstalled this game in a heartbeat. Word of mouth is very important to a game like this. I can't build a case to say tihs is a great game to my friends. After last night I am telling them I will let you know when they fix it.
I don't think it needs a major overhaul. It needs changes so that the marines do not get killed in a 1/2 a second in early game. Time and time again all I was seeing is one experienced skulk kill 1, 2, even 3 marines in a matter of a second or two. Now don't start telling me all this and that on how the marines need to aim better, stay together, yada yada yada. I know how to play. But a new player will and is getting killed time and time again as marine. And you multiply this ease of taking down 1 or more marines by one alien into the entire alien team base rushing and you get quite literally the worst gaming experience I have seen in a long long time.
Here are a few simple suggestions that I know are easy to do. Make the marines gun clips larger. Make the reload time shorter. Give him more armor at game start. There are many easy ways to adresss this. And if it throws the balance off a bit then adjust the aliens a bit if needed. But FIX THIS problem. This game is getting uninstalled left and right I am sure of it. And it doesn't deserve it. Its bad timing that Christmas came along with this problem being seen by all of these new players. All the more important to address it soon.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Re-balancing the game for the lowest common denominator will ruin the game. This is a bad idea. If your team is infested with rookies, you've tried to help, they either don't listen or don't care, find a new server. Sucks but you gotta do what you gotta do. If you want a higher quality game go look for pickup games. Pubs are and shall always be terrible examples of organized play.
I have been trying to get a handful of friends to start playing this game. I had one friend playing last night. We played 9 games as marines. We got absolutely blown out all 9 times. Most of the time the marines could not even hold an RT for more than a few seconds. Now I am not a new player. I know what the marines need to do to win. I have seen them win many times. Overall I'd say the marines win almost half the time. But when I try to look through the eyes of a new player the way I it was running last night, I would have uninstalled this game in a heartbeat. Word of mouth is very important to a game like this. I can't build a case to say tihs is a great game to my friends. After last night I am telling them I will let you know when they fix it.
I don't think it needs a major overhaul. It needs changes so that the marines do not get killed in a 1/2 a second in early game. Time and time again all I was seeing is one experienced skulk kill 1, 2, even 3 marines in a matter of a second or two. Now don't start telling me all this and that on how the marines need to aim better, stay together, yada yada yada. I know how to play. But a new player will and is getting killed time and time again as marine. And you multiply this ease of taking down 1 or more marines by one alien into the entire alien team base rushing and you get quite literally the worst gaming experience I have seen in a long long time.
Here are a few simple suggestions that I know are easy to do. Make the marines gun clips larger. Make the reload time shorter. Give him more armor at game start. There are many easy ways to adresss this. And if it throws the balance off a bit then adjust the aliens a bit if needed. But FIX THIS problem. This game is getting uninstalled left and right I am sure of it. And it doesn't deserve it. Its bad timing that Christmas came along with this problem being seen by all of these new players. All the more important to address it soon.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A rookie playing as a skulk against a decent marine will die just as often. So, what to do? Make the skulk bites do 1/3 more damage, increase skulk speed, buff skulk hp? You don't want those new skulk players to get beaten by better players do you? That would be terribly unbalanced, right?
Seriously, new players die more often, it's like this in every single game, unless the game requires zero skill. They play more, they get better, they die less often. The only thing NS2 can improve upon in this regard is a better tutorial (not just videos or explore mode, but a real ingame walkthrough explaining the basic mechanics and strategies would help).
That requires the players to want to learn the game. I mean, if I install a game I want to play it and learn it by-the-way, but I guess I wouldn't invest the time to learn the game like I learn another language or some sort of skill. Now that I think about it, I guess it would already help the game a lot if there would be way more in-game hints, say, information about structures if you hover over it with the mouse, information about <i>what</i> has killed you - PlanetSide2 does this and it helps a lot! - and so on. Expecting that someone goes to Youtube, learns the game in some sort of schooling-environment requires you to invest a lot of time only to learn a game which probably isn't any fun so far for you.
I don't support the idea of the thread creator but he has a point. I enjoy playing on rookie servers because I think someone needs to be there showing them how it's done but, well, for many of them the first games where not much fun and a game, wheter you're are good at it or not, should be fun. At least, you should know what you can and should do - but the game doesn't say that. More in-game information should be enough, I think. Sure, they will get beaten up but that's true any time you start playing something new. I don't think that's a big deal, if at least you know what killed for, for what reason, how it can be avoided and you at least grasp the basic idea what the game is all about. As a new player, you'll probably see a lot of stuff standing around and have no clue what's all that for. I think that is frustrating, dying isn't.
I have been trying to get a handful of friends to start playing this game. I had one friend playing last night. We played 9 games as marines. We got absolutely blown out all 9 times. Most of the time the marines could not even hold an RT for more than a few seconds. Now I am not a new player. I know what the marines need to do to win. I have seen them win many times. Overall I'd say the marines win almost half the time. But when I try to look through the eyes of a new player the way I it was running last night, I would have uninstalled this game in a heartbeat. Word of mouth is very important to a game like this. I can't build a case to say tihs is a great game to my friends. After last night I am telling them I will let you know when they fix it.
I don't think it needs a major overhaul. It needs changes so that the marines do not get killed in a 1/2 a second in early game. Time and time again all I was seeing is one experienced skulk kill 1, 2, even 3 marines in a matter of a second or two. Now don't start telling me all this and that on how the marines need to aim better, stay together, yada yada yada. I know how to play. But a new player will and is getting killed time and time again as marine. And you multiply this ease of taking down 1 or more marines by one alien into the entire alien team base rushing and you get quite literally the worst gaming experience I have seen in a long long time.
Here are a few simple suggestions that I know are easy to do. Make the marines gun clips larger. Make the reload time shorter. Give him more armor at game start. There are many easy ways to adresss this. And if it throws the balance off a bit then adjust the aliens a bit if needed. But FIX THIS problem. This game is getting uninstalled left and right I am sure of it. And it doesn't deserve it. Its bad timing that Christmas came along with this problem being seen by all of these new players. All the more important to address it soon.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Dude i dont know what to say, every game has a learning curve, why dont you take the turn to learn it. You're talking about making balances changes when you just started the game.
i joined a rookie server a few hours ago with my friend and what i saw was blatant pub stomping by 2 skilled alien players (they had clan tags too -_-).
Theres also RAMPANT team stacking going on in just about every server.
NS1 had these issues, and NS2 seems to be worse -_- Just what are rookie servers for anyway ? They just seem to be pub stomping grounds and thats it, i hardly see anyone else trying to help noobs .... Admins should start policing their rookie servers and kick/ban these people, They arent helping anyone, they are enjoying owning these new players and what we are left with are new players thinking "balance is horrible" "Ns2 is rife with hackers" "NS2 is not fun"
lmaooooooo!
This thread claims that aliens are OP. Marines are getting slaughtered because aliens can kill them so quickly. Marine teams are just getting run over. Etc...
I was reading the steam forums last night and a new player had a detailed balance thread. It was very similar to this. He was claiming aliens don't stand a chance. Marines kill aliens too fast. Melee vs range is unfair. He is seeing aliens get run over in every game. The game will never survive with such poor balance. Etc...
So which noob should the developers listen to? You both had the exact opposite experience. Is it really possible for you both to be right?
If someone doesn't want to l2p, this game isn't for them anyway. If you are seeing one team stacked all the time, switch servers. There are some servers where people know each other and conti.ually stack teams. You won't have that same experience on every server.
Why is that?
welcome to the world of Natural Selection, it's been this way since 2003 NS1 days.
A training/tutorial map would be a great idea to get the greens to learn the game without getting stomped by regulars.
That or a friendly pub where you can practice with fellow greens.
Some sort of ranking system would be a great help, where you join only servers with people with the same amount of playtime and kill/death ratio.
It is used a lot in sports. I haven't heard it used in the military.
Is this only a US thing or something? Why wouldn't people understand rookie?
Edit: I only know the word from some war movie and a game I used to play when I was five.
I used to play alot of the original AVP game, which this reminds me of alot somehow, specially in how the skulk is played.
It was a blast to figure things out and enjoy the game, even when we were getting stomped. The only thing i had a problem was was the alien khammander GUI sometimes obscuring upgrades, where the upgrades where placed wasnt also consistent. Also the learning curve as a marine commander is pretty severe, i still havnt got it down what to build when but i think it will be fine with more playtime.
Some people really do want everything handed to them on a plate these days. When you buy a game, i thought part of the fun was figuring it out and *playing* around with it.
As the saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."
As the saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Tutorials would be better as scripted in-game sequences that are kept very brief and in small chunks. Nobody wants to load up a new game and have to wade through 6 hours of videos to know what's going on.
Yup, the current tutorials are simply put awful. A video tutorial can be just fine, but if it starts like "Ooookay, welcome to this NS2 tutorial, my name is Whocares and I'll be covering Youdon'thaveaclue, as you know there are many elements bla blah blah and I'll be going through them BLAH BLAH *presses [x] and goes play and learn by mistakes*
The game should be fun and compelling to play regardless of losing or winning. What's probably the biggest overall issue when it comes to unfun is that losses are unnecessarily drawn out due to high spawn rates etc.
But yea, skulk movement, animations, and glancing bite are pretty op with equally skilled teams at lower skill levels. Don't expect a fix to this any time soon though. Even if UWE were to acknowledge it as a pressing issue, perfecting walljump (bhop ain't coming back) so it scales smoothly with skill isn't something done overnight.
Just no, NS2 is a competitive shooter, rookies have to learn this game like the veterans did before. If they dont want to because its to hard, then they shall go back to CoD or other faceroll games, NS2 is obviously not theirs. I rather like to play a good but hard game with a small community then a fastfood ###### game with a large community.
In my opinion devs should make the game even harder, especially on Alien side.
I've seen too many games where the community is smug as ###### with the "lol go back to CoD" and then a few months later crying about how it takes 20 minutes to find a full server.