Gorgeous Changelog - Natural Selection 2

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  • Squeal_Like_A_PigSqueal_Like_A_Pig Janitor Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 66Members, Super Administrators, NS1 Playtester, NS2 Developer, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Developer
    Zenn3k wrote: »
    Zenn3k wrote: »
    I'll probably be back in a month or two when another balance patch comes along, Aliens simply have no chance right now, its not even worth attempting to play a match.

    The "Gorgeous update" is pretty damn "ugly" if you ask me. Obviously sloppy when major advertised additions to the game don't even work (babblers) properly.

    If that addition was so lazily added to the game, I feel its safe to assume (rightly or wrongly) that the balance changes were not well thought out either.

    UWE has basically taken NS2 from my favorite game to play when I came home after work into "not worth loading into memory". Kindly fix before the next step which is uninstalling, thanks.

    http://ns2stats.org/

    "Currently 42 players are playing in ns2stats enabled servers". Wow, that some serious meta-data, a whole 42 people! Thats like...3 servers!

    Also, shows nothing about what the sample base is...this could be 5 games worth of data, nobody knows cause it doesn't say, and therefore means nothing.

    Every game I've played since the patch, marines not only won, but dominated the entire match...on these was on pubs when green players on marines.
    Actually our internal stats are showing pretty similar data, with over 2,500 games played. We are by no means saying the game is balanced, because clearly people are still messing around with the new features and figuring them out. But it does show that it is completely untrue that so far either marines (or aliens) are winning all the games in 240.
  • ExoskelettExoskelett Join Date: 2012-12-18 Member: 175509Members, Reinforced - Supporter
    edited March 2013
    anyways what about performance updates? or netcode improvements? the only "netcode" improvement i have seen was the "Skulk movement nerf" cuz this fits more into a worse 30 tickrate server
  • yehawmcgrawyehawmcgraw Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159694Members
    Great update! Gorge tunnels are a pleasure to use and decent is a breath of fresh air. Railguns too. Tons of long-standing requests fulfilled.

    Babbler pathing is a little too bad to be that effective but I'm sure they will come into their own.
  • tarquinbbtarquinbb Join Date: 2012-11-03 Member: 166314Members
    Sampson wrote: »
    honestly, after the huge hype for this patch, and after what i've received, i really wish i could get my $40 back

    that's too bad...

    on the other hand i upgraded to the deluxe version today and played a bunch of very close games. i still do well as marine and i still do well as alien. the only difference is that marines don't seem to be 'soft-losing' in the first 5 minutes of every game.
  • tarquinbbtarquinbb Join Date: 2012-11-03 Member: 166314Members
    Zenn3k wrote: »
    I'll probably be back in a month or two when another balance patch comes along, Aliens simply have no chance right now, its not even worth attempting to play a match.

    The "Gorgeous update" is pretty damn "ugly" if you ask me. Obviously sloppy when major advertised additions to the game don't even work (babblers) properly.

    If that addition was so lazily added to the game, I feel its safe to assume (rightly or wrongly) that the balance changes were not well thought out either.

    UWE has basically taken NS2 from my favorite game to play when I came home after work into "not worth loading into memory". Kindly fix before the next step which is uninstalling, thanks.

    damn, i must be the messiah then.

    this afternoon i was skulk > fade and won a 30 minute game with something like 45 kills 4 deaths.
  • yehawmcgrawyehawmcgraw Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159694Members
    edited March 2013
    Sampson wrote: »
    the only difference is that marines don't seem to be 'soft-losing' in the first 5 minutes of every game.
    Lol yeah 'soft-losing' @ 5 min, that's a good way to describe it. That feel when marines realize they are only ever going to hold two extra rt's and a tech point, and that tech point is not long for the world either.

    I'm not sure any early-game balance has been changed that much (in the marine's favor that is), these new marine wins are probably due to all the aliens screwing around with tunnels and babblers. The increased phase-gate rate and modified skulk hitboxing might be helping though.
  • lwflwf Join Date: 2006-11-03 Member: 58311Members, Constellation
    edited March 2013
    I'm getting random freezes in this build, NS2 was very stable for me before. The game locks up in anywhere from the loading map screen to late game. Don't know what's wrong, anyone else seeing it?
  • XariusXarius Join Date: 2003-12-21 Member: 24630Members, Reinforced - Supporter
    I'm sure that when people stop fucking around and rookies learn how to play aliens will once again comfortably settle on high win rates. And even if the stats somehow miraculously hold an even ground between the two sides, I think it would be a big mistake to consider the game is necessarily in a good state balance wise.
  • shaq_mobileshaq_mobile Join Date: 2009-12-10 Member: 69575Members
    Zenn3k wrote: »
    Zenn3k wrote: »
    I'll probably be back in a month or two when another balance patch comes along, Aliens simply have no chance right now, its not even worth attempting to play a match.

    The "Gorgeous update" is pretty damn "ugly" if you ask me. Obviously sloppy when major advertised additions to the game don't even work (babblers) properly.

    If that addition was so lazily added to the game, I feel its safe to assume (rightly or wrongly) that the balance changes were not well thought out either.

    UWE has basically taken NS2 from my favorite game to play when I came home after work into "not worth loading into memory". Kindly fix before the next step which is uninstalling, thanks.

    http://ns2stats.org/

    "Currently 42 players are playing in ns2stats enabled servers". Wow, that some serious meta-data, a whole 42 people! Thats like...3 servers!

    Also, shows nothing about what the sample base is...this could be 5 games worth of data, nobody knows cause it doesn't say, and therefore means nothing.

    Every game I've played since the patch, marines not only won, but dominated the entire match...on these was on pubs when green players on marines.


    I know that when patches come out and sometimes you get stuck on certain servers with a set of players, one team can steamroll the other continuously. After 239 I lost every single match as alien the whole night. It was my kneejerk reaction, as always, to blame my misfortune and poor playing on the game. That may not have been the case for you, but I'm pretty sure that link at least proves aliens have won a fair amount of the matches. Sure, not a huge sample size, but more accurate than our own anecdotes. What in specific did you feel was done poorly in the patch? You like the game and the developers (I think?) so how can you turn that frown upside down and articulate the changes you'd like to see?

    Personally I think the spike smoke needs to be greatly reduced for Lerk. However, I need to practice with it more. :)

    I want dual railgun exos plz. :)
  • nailertnnailertn Join Date: 2012-11-18 Member: 172301Members
    Xarius wrote: »
    I think it's naive to think that any of these smaller changes will have a serious enough impact on balance. It's downright frustrating really that UWE is giving the impression that they think their game is in a good enough state balance-wise for it to only need 'finetuning'. Newsflash, it isn't. It needs some MAJOR changes for this game to ever become balanced, as has clearly been illustrated in the plethora of in-depth balance analysis threads which clearly pointed out fundamental flaws in the alien economic model.

    Stop messing with little titbits on the side and get down dirty if you are serious about fixing the huge alien bias.

    I think you are underestimating the magnitude of these changes. You pretty much describe how I felt about the game for months but now is really not the time. Although it is a content patch officially it is also the biggest thing to happen to balance in a long time. Even if the changes are not exactly what some of us hoped to see, planning further improvements before we see how the update plays out is pointless.
  • Racer1Racer1 Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9615Members
    I had a fun time playing gorgeous last night. Kudos to UW for a great release.
  • PaajtorPaajtor Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168634Members
    btw, I noticed a small detail on the Descent map.
    If you take a look outside, and view down on the planet that the ship is orbitting, you can see an asteroid-belt.
    The asteroids are moving in their orbit :)

    On the other hand, the planet and ship seem stationary, as the star background looks to be fixed in position (assuming the ship itself is in geo-stationary orbit).
  • CrazyEddieCrazyEddie Join Date: 2013-01-08 Member: 178196Members
    edited March 2013
    Kei-chan wrote: »
    Heres an idea instead of bitching on the forums, how bout you just dont play the game and get over it
    "Agree with me or get out" is a really juvenile and counter-productive attitude to take.

    Feedback is helpful, whether it's positive or not, because it allows the developer to know how people feel about the things they're doing.

    What Sampson provided was not helpful feedback.

    Sampson's post was simple attention-w###ing. If taken seriously, his post implies that a) he doesn't want to play the game any more, but b) won't stop playing and/or complaining unless someone pays him forty dollars. Of course, one shouldn't take his post seriously, because as I said, all he's really doing is attention-w###ing.
  • SquishpokePOOPFACESquishpokePOOPFACE -21,248 posts (ignore below) Join Date: 2012-10-31 Member: 165262Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    CrazyEddie wrote: »
    Kei-chan wrote: »
    Heres an idea instead of bitching on the forums, how bout you just dont play the game and get over it
    "Agree with me or get out" is a really juvenile and counter-productive attitude to take.

    Feedback is helpful, whether it's positive or not, because it allows the developer to know how people feel about the things they're doing.

    What Sampson provided was not helpful feedback.

    Sampson's post was simple attention-w###ing. If taken seriously, his post implies that a) he doesn't want to play the game any more, but b) won't stop playing and/or complaining unless someone pays him forty dollars. Of course, one shouldn't take his post seriously, because as I said, all he's really doing is attention-w###ing.

    This does not even merit discussion, as he has been justly jailed and cast into exile.
  • CrazyEddieCrazyEddie Join Date: 2013-01-08 Member: 178196Members
    Jekt wrote: »
    First person spectate [..] The sounds either don't play or play twice moments after one another.

    I have noticed this bug as well.
  • CrazyEddieCrazyEddie Join Date: 2013-01-08 Member: 178196Members
    Paajtor wrote: »
    btw, I noticed a small detail on the Descent map.
    If you take a look outside, and view down on the planet that the ship is orbitting, you can see an asteroid-belt.
    The asteroids are moving in their orbit :)

    Go into spectator mode and switch to free-move first-person (press 1). Then move outside the map and take a look at the skybox.

    It's animated. And, well, gorgeous.
  • YuukiYuuki Join Date: 2010-11-20 Member: 75079Members
    edited March 2013
    So, I played a couple of games.

    - Skulk movement

    I think the changes are pretty good, combat feels less chaotic. Maybe against shotguns it's a bit much though.

    - Descent

    The map looks great, but I have to say NS2 gameplay doesn't care about look at all, I just jumped in the map, activated the alien vision and all I saw is geometry to jump on, cover to approach marines and vents. It's nice to walk around and look at all the details during the game warm-up though. The layout feels a bit generic but it seems to play well overall.

    - Cloak

    The new effect looks good, the 100% invisible + silent problem is fixed but I fear that the mechanic will need to be changed again.

    - New Exo gun

    It looks very cool and is much more interesting than the minigun. I don't really like the exo though, it's so slow and full of screen gadgets. Can we get the new gun for normal marines ?

    - Babblers

    I don't really have an opinion on babblers, their cute I guess.

    - Gorge tunnel

    The implementation is very nice, it feels different from the phase gate. The infestation requirement reduce its strategic interest greatly though. Some might remember that the idea emerged when eclipse was remade, as taking a second hive in a four TP map with a choke point in the middle is pretty hard without ns1 hive teleportation. I'm not sure that the current implementation can solve this problem.

    - General comment

    The choices on the alien side are still lacking, specially in the upgrades department, the game feels very straightforward: get cara, get leap, grab a cup of coffee, get bile, spam cysts. The defensive structure spam on alien side can get pretty bad. The game flow still feels very rigid and subject to stalemates. Powernodes are a pain in the ass like usual. Still can't see half of the alien gameplay element in alien vision.
  • peregrinusperegrinus Join Date: 2010-07-16 Member: 72445Members
    Is server performance worse in this build? Lots of players moving in laggy ways even though their pings are good.
  • YuukiYuuki Join Date: 2010-11-20 Member: 75079Members
    I saw a lot of laggy players indeed, but I didn't look at the tickrate.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    Yes, a larger player count + long round times are creating unusually low tick rates.
    Max is on the case!
  • peregrinusperegrinus Join Date: 2010-07-16 Member: 72445Members
    Thanks, that makes sense. In the last game, it was after 30 minutes I started to really notice players staggering and warping.
  • Kei-chanKei-chan Join Date: 2013-01-20 Member: 180898Members
    Zenn3k wrote: »
    "Currently 42 players are playing in ns2stats enabled servers". Wow, that some serious meta-data, a whole 42 people! Thats like...3 servers!

    Also, shows nothing about what the sample base is...this could be 5 games worth of data, nobody knows cause it doesn't say, and therefore means nothing.

    Every game I've played since the patch, marines not only won, but dominated the entire match...on these was on pubs when green players on marines.

    This. NS2stats is a server add-on, not global data gathered from every game. Yet another reason I'm sick of people pulling these win ratios out of their butts. They're from a small cross-section of servers not representative of all games. Like ratios and statistics in every other form, they're inaccurate and easily made to look biased however people want them to.

    The general theme of posts on this board since the patch has been "Marines are pounding aliens, I haven't seen aliens win a single match, the skulks are really slow and heavy now" to which people then respond, "It's because everyone's going gorge," or "NS2stats says aliens are winning even more now," or "IF YOU CAN'T DEAL WITH THE CHANGES, GET OUT," or "Haha, now you know what we had to deal with as marines for the past 4 months."

    The changes to skulk movement mechanics were hamfisted and overdone. Adjusting the animations is fine, but the fact is that marines now outrun skulks. They are now basically marines with less health, armor, and speed, who are expected to defeat the enemy team with only axes. This change alone has wrecked much of the balance.
  • Zenn3kZenn3k Join Date: 2013-03-01 Member: 183506Members
    Kei-chan wrote: »

    The changes to skulk movement mechanics were hamfisted and overdone. Adjusting the animations is fine, but the fact is that marines now outrun skulks. They are now basically marines with less health, armor, and speed, who are expected to defeat the enemy team with only axes. This change alone has wrecked much of the balance.

    So very much this.

    Skulk - Melee only. Very low health. Slower than base marine. Can walk on walls. Takes 3 bites to kill a marine, assuming you don't get "glancing" bites...which suck.

    Marine - Super accurate ranged and melee. Good health. Damage upgrades (aliens no get). Faster than base skulk. Has no "glancing bullets".

    How is THIS balanced exactly?

    There really is no reason to play right now, not until the skulks get their movement speed back at least, minimum. That game is unplayable right now.
  • Kei-chanKei-chan Join Date: 2013-01-20 Member: 180898Members
    And to clarify, I'm not saying Marines are OP.

    Marines are fine. I'd like to see the cost/research for railgun exos addressed in some way, but it's not game-breaking.

    It's that skulks are bricks now. That they're bad and difficult to use now isn't the issue, even, it's that they're no longer fun to play as. Even if I manage to get lucky and kill 4 marines in a single encounter, it's just not fun anymore. It feels like I'm freaking crouch-walking around with a knife, not leaping from wall to wall, biting them and misleading their fire. I don't feel like an alien anymore, and it's just not fun.
  • ToastieToastie Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167351Members
    I want dual railgun exos plz. :)

    This would in no way be OP.

  • nailertnnailertn Join Date: 2012-11-18 Member: 172301Members
    Zenn3k wrote: »

    So very much this.

    Skulk - Melee only. Very low health. Slower than base marine. Can walk on walls. Takes 3 bites to kill a marine, assuming you don't get "glancing" bites...which suck.

    Marine - Super accurate ranged and melee. Good health. Damage upgrades (aliens no get). Faster than base skulk. Has no "glancing bullets".

    How is THIS balanced exactly?

    There really is no reason to play right now, not until the skulks get their movement speed back at least, minimum. That game is unplayable right now.

    Being loud is ok, being misinformed is ok, being both at the same time isn't.
  • KuddlyKalliKuddlyKalli Yuggera Country Join Date: 2010-12-23 Member: 75905Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester
    Xarius wrote: »
    I think it's naive to think that any of these smaller changes will have a serious enough impact on balance. It's downright frustrating really that UWE is giving the impression that they think their game is in a good enough state balance-wise for it to only need 'finetuning'. Newsflash, it isn't. It needs some MAJOR changes for this game to ever become balanced, as has clearly been illustrated in the plethora of in-depth balance analysis threads which clearly pointed out fundamental flaws in the alien economic model.

    Stop messing with little titbits on the side and get down dirty if you are serious about fixing the huge alien bias.

    I think it's naive to think that a patch containing new weapons/abilities would also contain major balance changes. And it is arrogant to believe that UWE considers balance in its current state to be fine. They never said that.

    Now that Gorgeous is out the focus will be on balance, as has been stated already. So calm down and be patient rather than make inflammatory posts.
  • SeahuntsSeahunts Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151973Members
    So much whinging here! Overall this is a good patch. As others have said its a bit early to judge balance changes. I played about 6 hours yesterday, and it was close to 50% win rate anyway. A lot of games people just wanted to try new stuff so there was a team of gorges demanding sphincters be researched ASAP and marine comms rushing rail guns etc.

    Things I like about this patch:
    -Docking changes - last round of docking ruined it completely, hopefully its a bit better now.
    -New map (can we get it added to the UWE official Australia all servers rotation list twice?) Only had a couple of rounds on it.
    - New toys obviously.

    Things I really do not like:
    **Lerk tracers. The lerk was a fragile beast as it was. It did not need to be hit with the nerf bat, particularly in the harass department.
    *Camo changes. Not much point to camo if you can be seen even a little bit. Also its unclear in alien vision when you are camouflaged and when you are not.

    Thing I am concerned about but waiting to judge:
    Skulk movement changes. In games I played it seemed not to matter as skulk, but then I noticed I was killing skulks a fair bit easier as marine too. Hard to tell mostly because this patch seems to have brought a lot of people back to NS2 and even a pub scrub like me has improved a fair bit while they have been gone.


    Oh and gorge tunnels, if you are worried about marines using them, place 3 whips at your end... Hilarity ensues.
  • Ghosthree3Ghosthree3 Join Date: 2010-02-13 Member: 70557Members, Reinforced - Supporter
    Jekt wrote: »
    First person spectate seems like a prototype, it's like you have 500 ping when watching someone. The sounds either don't play or play twice moments after one another. And there is a really obvious discrepancy between where they are aiming and what you see as a spectator.

    Great that it's in, hope it sees a lot of improvement however.

    This isn't too surprising really, the reason it's taken so long to get FPS at all is because of how hard it is to accurately show a client side view. Not every single movement is sent to the server (like twitching 10 pixels left, then right again instantly) every time, that would require so much data to be sent, and then there's the latency which is incurable.
  • CrazyEddieCrazyEddie Join Date: 2013-01-08 Member: 178196Members
    edited March 2013
    Kei-chan wrote: »
    This. NS2stats is a server add-on, not global data gathered from every game. Yet another reason I'm sick of people pulling these win ratios out of their butts. They're from a small cross-section of servers not representative of all games.
    In what way is this cross-section of servers not representative of all games?

    Like ratios and statistics in every other form, they're inaccurate and easily made to look biased however people want them to.
    In what way are these statistics inaccurate? In what way have they been made to look biased?

    Do you actually know anything about statistics or are you just making things up? ... that's a rhetorical question, of course. You don't need to answer that. Your answers to my first three questions will make that clear.
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