(Every round of balance test when playing with non veteran players.)
The cohesion is just not there enough for casual players (again non veteran NS2 players, unfortunately it's mostly only veteran players that even venture onto the balance test server) to be constantly welding one another all the time. I'm still for forward armories not being able to repair armor, however an established tech point HAS to be somewhere were you can recover as a player without having to rely on others assistance, you never have to see aliens huddled together licking each other's wounds to regain their armor.
Nor frankly even as a veteran player, it's hardly enjoyable gameplay running around begging for someone to weld there should at least be general expectation to be able to recover when you're in your established base, not faced with potential downtime as you stand there like a begger hoping someone will drop a quarter in your cup.
Before anyone replies with "Well I always weld others." give that some thought for a second. Yes,veteran players will weld, people who post and read these forums weld, the vast majority of players who will never visit this forum, have no greater interest other then an enjoyable experience after along day at work or school, they just want to enjoy some combat without a massive downtime that required amount of cohesion and awareness just isn't there all the time (it's rather a crap shoot). It's also a massive turn off to a lot of people when they have to rely on someone else as the only source of recuperation and sometimes that help just doesn't come and they're just faced with extended downtime, standing there.
Well it was obvious that some of the changes in BT mod including the armory one will not be that great for the average gamers who play just for enjoyment. The other armory thread has so many pages on it with similar and other arguments that it would be silly to repeat them all when it will not have any effect. Since we already know it is going to be put in no matter what we say, the only option is just sit back and watch the results.
How the majority reacts should be interesting given the current state of the game. This is just my personal opinion but I feel the game has never really been balanced for the majority but all of the changes seem to be made in the direction of how a few people envision NS2 should be played rather than how to make NS2 a more fun game that people want to keep going back to. Of course fun is subjective but ideally what the majority of people feel is more enjoyable should be the way to go if you want a game that retains more players. For me the BT mod is 50/50 for me. I agree with a good number of changes but hate others. In the end I could be wrong and the masses might end up enjoying all this "in depth game play" so I guess we will see where this all goes.
I may be one of the few that hold this opinion, but the NS2 movement system feels good to me... The movement in this mod is way too unintuitive and pretty much depends on having a knowledge of Bhopping in HL, which is just retarded. Marines slip around everywhere like they have big sticks of lard on the bottom of their boots. Lame.
I may be one of the few that hold this opinion, but the NS2 movement system feels good to me... The movement in this mod is way too unintuitive and pretty much depends on having a knowledge of Bhopping in HL, which is just retarded. Marines slip around everywhere like they have big sticks of lard on the bottom of their boots. Lame.
Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one. I feel the vanilla movement is pretty good, and could maybe only use some small numbers tweaks. This kind of overhaul is just too much imo. Would rather see the walljump mechanic improved upon than see bunnyhop return. But then again, it's still experimental I guess. We'll have to see how it works out.
It is actually walljumping to build speed, you only have to hold forward + a strafe key and press jump and go in a straight line. Doing the figure of 8 and curving in the air does not make you go faster anymore.
You only bhop to maintain the speed from walljumping.
(again non veteran NS2 players, unfortunately it's mostly only veteran players that even venture onto the balance test server)
Not really.
Actually I see more rookies on the Balance Test server than on the vanilla servers I usually play in. Something attracts them to the server and of course they keep wondering what changed.
It is a one-time investment of 15 res and then 5 res for every Armory to get your armor healing back. The magic words are Robotics Factory and MAC. It's even more cost effective than the Advanced Armory idea, can keep your entire base alive and also works on the run for teams on the frontline, so I have no idea what you are crying about here.
It's just that most commanders on the Balance Test servers are not used to such kind of strategies yet because it also took Robotics Factories a long time to become viable in vanilla.
matsoMaster of PatchesJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
A bite in this mod isn't only successful if you hit a 75 in the vanilla game.
I believe the width range is 1.1 meters in vanilla, and that accounts for all 3 damage steps. In this mod a landed bite is a 75 every time with a width of 0.7 meters. I think it's plenty generous.
I think the armories not welding armor experiment has been a tremendous success in this mod. Using the 50 or so rounds I've played on it to judge, I've been pleasantly surprised by how many people are welding each other during spare moments and think it's been playing into the marines favor in comparison to the running back to base and hump armory strategy on the base game.
Still going backwards through the posts. Glad to hear that the bite width is still pretty wide. I need to get this mod downloaded, and give it a shot.
I wouldnt have guessed that many people would be willing to spend time welding to keep each others armor up. Don't often see to many people going out of their way in other games to play support unless they are a class dedicated to it. Still not sure I like the idea of having to rely on someone else for something that important. I suppose I will get a better feel for it once I get this downloaded.
One of the weird things about NS2 is that it's very much a team game. So it attracts an unusual high number of people that likes to play in teams. Making a sacrifice for the team (by buying a welder and spending time welding others) is something that actually appeals to people that likes to play on teams.
To people weaned on the simplified "what's in it for me?" model of human behaviour, this is very puzzling.
Doing a trivial jump from welding to global culture/economics, it can be pointed out that Scandinavian countries have an unusual level of trust in other people and their governments, which correlates well with economic and living-well measurements.
It worked in ns1,people get used to welding which leads onto welding structures. At the moment there is no incentive for newbies to get a welder.
Exo on 1 cc doesnt bode well (for my experience)
Once again, it only worked in NS1 because it was the same people playing the game over and over, very rarely was there actually someone new to the game.
UWE needs to try to cater to rookies joining the game rather than adding even more tasks for them to try and keep track of, which has already been a large complaint of why many don't keep playing NS2.
Anyone I have who isn't currently playing ns2 on my list but has it, their complaints have nothing to do with the game being complex, just that their computers cannot run it at desired framerates. In fact most of them think natural selection is one of the best teamplay games to come out in ages
The stuff from the BT is learned pretty quickly, even quicker if someone explains everything to you while you're playing it. The only things that take some time to learn is the bhop for skulk, but once you get it down it's pretty much another muscle memory mechanic. The lerk hasn't changed much but feels better, you'll get that quick, and the new fade is much easier for new players to pick up on, while giving veterans enough to still be effective with it (however I don't know if they're going to keep vanilla fade or this one, since vanilla fade is so well done already). If anything this should spark interest from those players to keep on playing. Heck I don't even launch the game anymore unless I'm joining BT to be honest, it feels so much more flavorfull than the vanilla game atm. Even if half of the matches are completely one sided. I'm still enjoying it more
It worked in ns1,people get used to welding which leads onto welding structures. At the moment there is no incentive for newbies to get a welder.
Exo on 1 cc doesnt bode well (for my experience)
Once again, it only worked in NS1 because it was the same people playing the game over and over, very rarely was there actually someone new to the game.
UWE needs to try to cater to rookies joining the game rather than adding even more tasks for them to try and keep track of, which has already been a large complaint of why many don't keep playing NS2.
UWE needs to have faith in the kind of game they're trying to make and do what's right for gameplay. The players will follow. It is a myth that complicated games can't be successful - just look at DotA 2, one of the most complicated multiplayer games on Steam and also the most successful by a large margin.
Requiring marines to weld eachother enhances teamwork and makes the game more fun for people that are tolerant of a certain level of complexity. People who are not tolerant of that probably wouldn't have been lasting fans of NS2 anyway.
Is the idea of using a welder to... get this... weld a teammate in a heavily team oriented game REALLY soo difficult that newbies will be completly baffled by the concept?
Jeez folks, not every new player is completely foreign to the idea of having to use team work.
I like the welding change. Personally, even in vanilla NS2 I always go out of my way to make sure the Exo's and my teammates are welded up. It's just a warm feeling in your stomach to know that you saved your comrade's life by giving him that extra bit of armor. It almost reminds me of a doting mother making sure her child's winter clothes are on tight before she sends him off into the great outdoors.
No, it worked in ns1 because there was no choice. If there is no choice for armor regen then people will soon weld. Same as they know how to biy jps or shottys
I don't understand why people think the welding is going to be a problem... if people aren't welding just tell them to rtfm/l2w.. not to mention it'll be pretty obvious that you're supposed to weld, i mean everyone is going to be welding..
Vladimir Van VodkaSexy BeastJoin Date: 2010-07-30Member: 73364Members, Reinforced - Shadow
I like the idea of making welders more crucial to the game, creating some dedicated human controlled support players for marines.
I remember in the beta or w/e when they did remove armor armory regeneration, it was harsh at first but everybody adapted and it was quite fun honestly.
I think welding is unintuitive more than anything. I mean, when you pick up a welder, you expect to become better at building and maintaining structures. What actually happens is that you are no better at building structures (i think...) but you can heal your ally's armor as well. The welder replaces your switch axe, so you imagine that it does similar damage to structures (you paid res for it after all, why should you get shortchanged?). This is not the case. You end up doing additional damage to flammable structures (how are you supposed to know which ones those are?) but less damage to normal structures.
I dont think its a problem normally. Its such a minor issue. But ns2 is full of these kinds of things that you just have to know. For the longest time, i had no idea why the armory wouldn't heal me, until i realized that i have to be looking at it for it to work. And that was AFTER I had watched a few tutorial videos on how the game works.
I still think how fast Marines can get their tech compared to the Alien team is a bit unfair. Since they get their AA weapons for free, and the ability to rush higher tech for them is legit and quite fast, it leaves the Aliens in a stupid position. If they are not in the lead or tied, they get ruined. Sewlek is in the game with me now so he can see the stupidity of 400 res railguns that can be rushed with free Flamethrowers.
I should clarify. The issue I have at this point is Fades and Onos are still 50/75 res. Fades still require three hits to kill a Marine and die just as easy as an Exo assuming no research. I know once they have Shadowstep they are gods, but they take research. Railguns get to still oneshot Slulks no matter the occasion. This is not to say I disagree with the state the Marines are in, I just wish it was more comparable on the Alien side if they have the lead, or increasing how long it takes to get Proto.
I don't understand why people think the welding is going to be a problem... if people aren't welding just tell them to rtfm/l2w.. not to mention it'll be pretty obvious that you're supposed to weld, i mean everyone is going to be welding..
Because it was a problem in beta.
That's why it was cut.
It wasn't hugely successful outside of organized play.. In fact it was just a nerf through confusion and frustration for rookies. It lasted a whole one patch.
No feedback or communication was implemented at the time, so it was incredibly frustrating and this was largely the reason for it's failure. (flash backs of tiered bite cones)
Now that you can see who needs welding, audio and visual cues have been added, its in a much better shape.
But i still don't think it should be implemented without complete and proper communication and feedback :
All that's remaining is allowing the player to manually ask for a weld so the micless souls out there don't have to desperately jump up and down in front of a marine hoping the other notices the weld icon. (even if he doesn't have one, so that he knows to go buy one) also having a more clear feedback of successfully welding so that it can be tracked by peripheral would be nice, ala medic gun. (but with way less clutter)
I don't understand why people think the welding is going to be a problem... if people aren't welding just tell them to rtfm/l2w.. not to mention it'll be pretty obvious that you're supposed to weld, i mean everyone is going to be welding..
Because it was a problem in beta.
That's why it was cut.
It wasn't hugely successful outside of organized play.. In fact it was just a nerf through confusion and frustration for rookies. It lasted a whole one patch.
No feedback or communication was implemented at the time, so it was incredibly frustrating and this was largely the reason for it's failure. (flash backs of tiered bite cones)
Now that you can see who needs welding, audio and visual cues have been added, its in a much better shape.
But i still don't think it should be implemented without complete and proper communication and feedback :
All that's remaining is allowing the player to manually ask for a weld so the micless souls out there don't have to desperately jump up and down in front of a marine hoping the other notices the weld icon. (even if he doesn't have one, so that he knows to go buy one) also having a more clear feedback of successfully welding so that it can be tracked by peripheral would be nice, ala medic gun. (but with way less clutter)
I don't remember there being any complaints that it was confusing or unintuitive. It was a nerf at a time when marines were already in pretty bad shape performance-wise. The design arguments were exactly the same ones we're seeing now from both sides, and it was removed before the community had any chance to adapt.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@zek You just agreed it was a nerf*, and said there needed to be more time for players to adapt.... Yet you don't see how that indicated a lack of intuitive implementation?
*what do you attribute to making it a nerf anyhow, not that I disagree?
@zek You just agreed it was a nerf*, and said there needed to be more time for players to adapt.... Yet you don't see how that indicated a lack of intuitive implementation?
*what do you attribute to making it a nerf anyhow, not that I disagree?
? I'm not sure what you mean, removing armor healing from the armory is a nerf no matter how you look at it. It takes time to adapt because players have learned from the current behavior that they can simply return to base at any time to repair their armor without needing to stay near teammates. However I don't think there's anything inherently unintuitive about it. Either the armory heals armor or it doesn't, neither is more intuitive than the other. If it had been this way from the beginning, no one would think it was strange. Welders no longer need to be researched, so anyone at an armory can look at its menu and know how armor is repaired.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited May 2013
@zek
If that were true though players would have figured that out after the first time they put their face into an armory that week, and would require no further adapting?
But that didn't happen because much more was missing, imo, like visual cues on the HUD and audio, not to mention the range and tolerance for welding players was very narrow, and at that time there was no "on entity" effects like that nice subtle glow of blue you see now. So only vets picked up on what was needed.
The concept might have been sound, but if the implementation failed, then the house of cards fall and the mechanic is therefore viewed as unintuitive.
Unintuitive play means the rookies didn't understand how to weld, (go to armory) then they didn't understand when to weld, (very little cues) then they had no method of requesting a weld (still not implemented).
That's how it failed on all fronts, basically, imo. And that's where i see a lack of intuitive implementation in the past.
But like i said, most of those problems have been fixed (Save for the two i mentioned) so i don't think it would have nearly the downsides as it did before, in public settings.
Please don't give suggestions if you haven't played the mod at all.
I have, just not in a long time. Was just going off the discussion in the other page.
It has been ages since the change of getting both upgrades on one building was not in this balance test. The very thing you had as an example is impossible in the current mod and has been for a few months.
oooohhh, yeah. Completely slipped my mind. Sorry. Yeah it was like that when I played but just forgot. Something somebody said about being locked into an upgrade cause the comm hadn't researched it threw me off.
The one patch armour welding was more of a puzzling change than something universally requested. The players on Australian servers at least were coping and the game was better for it.
It seemed very silly that such a change was reverted after barely any testing because of what appeared to be a negative vocal minority that wasn't even as loud as the ones shouting to keep it.
I still think how fast Marines can get their tech compared to the Alien team is a bit unfair. Since they get their AA weapons for free, and the ability to rush higher tech for them is legit and quite fast, it leaves the Aliens in a stupid position. If they are not in the lead or tied, they get ruined. Sewlek is in the game with me now so he can see the stupidity of 400 res railguns that can be rushed with free Flamethrowers.
I should clarify. The issue I have at this point is Fades and Onos are still 50/75 res. Fades still require three hits to kill a Marine and die just as easy as an Exo assuming no research. I know once they have Shadowstep they are gods, but they take research. Railguns get to still oneshot Slulks no matter the occasion. This is not to say I disagree with the state the Marines are in, I just wish it was more comparable on the Alien side if they have the lead, or increasing how long it takes to get Proto.
Agreed. I really don't like that marines get Flamethrowers and Grenade Launchers basically for free once they upgraded to an AA.
It's also a cutdown in their tech cost, so more res that they can spend on the (also cheaper) Proto Lab upgrades. I don't suggest a direct increase of the AA upgrade cost -that would hamper the spread of AA to a second or third base- but perhaps introduce another upgrade "Advanced Weapons" in the Advanced Armory that consists of Flamethrowers and Grenade Launchers in one pack. That way none of them is really left behind and you can still balance the costs and research time independently without having to worry about the impacts that it would have on the tech progression towards a Prototype Lab.
I also think that research times could be incorporated a lot more into balancing (the pretty long research time for Nanoshield is a good example) than they currently are, but I guess they are currently kept short to give marines the chance to react to higher alien lifeforms in time. Still, the idea of having a longer timer ticking down before such a shift of power like the Proto Lab upgrades hit the field is quite tempting.
Similar to super weapons in C&C: once you build a Ion Cannon Station, your opponent gets to see the 5 minute countdown before your superweapon is ready to fire, thus putting him under pressure to do something about it. When aliens recognize a Proto Lab in a marine base, they should be scared that they have only X more minutes until marines get a lot more powerful. When the countdown is too short, it often means that marines already get that power before aliens even see the Proto Lab for the first time - taking away any feeling of "hey guys, we need to prevent these upgrades somehow" and "hey guys, we need to hold out somehow until the upgrades are ready" on the respective teams.
Another factor that probably plays into that too is that the only way to prevent the upgrade is to destroy the structure in time. Imho you should also be able to stop the upgrade process by destroying the prerequisites for the upgrade. For instance should destroying the second CC cause any upgrade process in the Proto Lab to be on ice until marines manage to rebuild the CC, rather than just continuing the research regardless. Likewise should taking the power away from a structure not automatically cancel the upgrade process but only stop it as well.
Same for alien upgrades that are being researched while aliens lose a Hive.
Contrary to popular belief, automatic pistols don't solve pistol scripting. Especially when you don't treat the underlying animation/refire rate problems. You're still going to be able to script pistols to fire faster than 'automatic'.
Besides, automatic pistols is just not in the spirit of NS.
Sewlek, can we please just make Pistols automatic and fix the animation/refire rate problems?
Scripts are still a scourge on the game and I do not understand why people think the ability to click fast is a real skill. I know that people will attempt to use spirit as the reason the change should not happen, but balance and design should overtake spirit.
Contrary to popular belief, automatic pistols don't solve pistol scripting. Especially when you don't treat the underlying animation/refire rate problems. You're still going to be able to script pistols to fire faster than 'automatic'.
Besides, automatic pistols is just not in the spirit of NS.
The spirit of NS does not live in the rapid clicking of a mouse button. If what you mean to say is that NS1 didn't do it that way, that's true, but who cares?
Let's face it, the pistol is a really difficult weapon to use effectively. Harder than any other weapon the marines have by an order of magnitude - most players are just absolutely useless with it. I don't see any reason why it should be this way. Yes it's a secondary weapon, but it should be weaker because of that, not miss 9 shots out of 10.
I meant in the sense of weapon uniqueness, feel, and NS design simplicity. It's gritty, functions differently from other weapons, and takes a different skill set. HMG was removed because of too much functional overlap with LMG and i agree with the reasoning behind that decision despite the 'balance' hole problems it left behind.
I don't think players being useless is a good reason to skill floor it so it becomes a pseudo high damage, low clipsize lmg. That's really all automatic pistol is (I'm useless with pistol myself so this isn't elitist motivated). Like you say, its a difficult weapon to master, and i think that in itself is reason to keep it manual fire.
People are always going to want mechanic changes that artificially make them better at the game, whether they realise it or not. The hard part is objectively asking how massive skill floors like automatic pistols affect game balance across skill levels, what changes would then be required to rebalance, and whether you end up doing harm to NS's unique primary/secondary weapon usage. Where pistol isn't just the weapon of last resort like in your typical shooter.
TL;DR
The contextual issue was pistol scripting, and automation is not by any stretch of the imagination a solution but rather an unrelated additional feature. One that i wouldn't want to see implemented for certain reasons. A real solution would be fixing the 100ms min refire rate so that it actually works reliably and all that.
The contextual issue was pistol scripting, and automation is not by any stretch of the imagination a solution, but rather an unrelated additional feature that i wouldn't want to see for certain reasons. A real solution would be fixing the 100ms min refire rate so that it actually works.
Except this doesn't fix the biggest issue. A script can fire every .1 second without requiring to rapidly click your mouse possible making you miss shots. People can fluctuate between .1-.3 as well when they are spamming. As this is the case when scripts are the best in every situation, it needs to be fixed.
SewlekThe programmer previously known as SchimmelJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16247Members, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Developer
bio mass:
i think this feature of the balance mod didn't get enough attention yet. its quite a big change for the alien tech tree and most people seem to accept it (which is a good thing) but im still unsure which variation I should use in the end. So far 2 options have been tested:
a) currently active. upgrading bio mass is relatively cheap, but you need in addition to research each ability individually
b) got tested some weeks ago, bio mass is more expensive but you get the abilities automatically
as i see it, the advantage of option a) is that you (sometimes) can be a bit more creative as alien commander. you can make a few more decisions, like "tunnel + bile bomb first or leap" or save most of your resources and go instead for umbra and shadow step (and help your skulks with passive upgrades and drifters until then). the abilities are relatively cheap, to promote the alien comm to research the abilities in a given order, but its not mandatory
option b follows the philosophy of "remove the illusion of choice" (as some people call it). you can no longer decide if you want tunnels or leap first, they unlock automatically as you level up the bio mass. this has the big advantage of no ability being ever left behind, so essentially it shifts a decision a comm makes (which class to upgrade) to the field player (which life form to evolve to). instead of "which" ability to research, the important factors are "when" and "where"
a)
pros:
- more choices
- keeps the alien comm busy
cons:
- many choices are not meaningful (you dont want to delay leap by that much in favor of shadow step or stomp since nobody has resources for fade / onos yet)
- invitation to a cookie cutter build (and therefor "newbie trap"?)
b)
pros:
- decision which hive to upgrade (and when) is more meaningful, since bio mass costs are higher
- field players can always play their favorite life form and never need to beg the comm to "research umbra plx!"
- low harvester count strategies are not possible anymore, since you always need to go through the full tech tree and would fall behind otherwise
Comments
Well it was obvious that some of the changes in BT mod including the armory one will not be that great for the average gamers who play just for enjoyment. The other armory thread has so many pages on it with similar and other arguments that it would be silly to repeat them all when it will not have any effect. Since we already know it is going to be put in no matter what we say, the only option is just sit back and watch the results.
How the majority reacts should be interesting given the current state of the game. This is just my personal opinion but I feel the game has never really been balanced for the majority but all of the changes seem to be made in the direction of how a few people envision NS2 should be played rather than how to make NS2 a more fun game that people want to keep going back to. Of course fun is subjective but ideally what the majority of people feel is more enjoyable should be the way to go if you want a game that retains more players. For me the BT mod is 50/50 for me. I agree with a good number of changes but hate others. In the end I could be wrong and the masses might end up enjoying all this "in depth game play" so I guess we will see where this all goes.
Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one. I feel the vanilla movement is pretty good, and could maybe only use some small numbers tweaks. This kind of overhaul is just too much imo. Would rather see the walljump mechanic improved upon than see bunnyhop return. But then again, it's still experimental I guess. We'll have to see how it works out.
It is actually walljumping to build speed, you only have to hold forward + a strafe key and press jump and go in a straight line. Doing the figure of 8 and curving in the air does not make you go faster anymore.
You only bhop to maintain the speed from walljumping.
Not really.
Actually I see more rookies on the Balance Test server than on the vanilla servers I usually play in. Something attracts them to the server and of course they keep wondering what changed.
It is a one-time investment of 15 res and then 5 res for every Armory to get your armor healing back. The magic words are Robotics Factory and MAC. It's even more cost effective than the Advanced Armory idea, can keep your entire base alive and also works on the run for teams on the frontline, so I have no idea what you are crying about here.
It's just that most commanders on the Balance Test servers are not used to such kind of strategies yet because it also took Robotics Factories a long time to become viable in vanilla.
One of the weird things about NS2 is that it's very much a team game. So it attracts an unusual high number of people that likes to play in teams. Making a sacrifice for the team (by buying a welder and spending time welding others) is something that actually appeals to people that likes to play on teams.
To people weaned on the simplified "what's in it for me?" model of human behaviour, this is very puzzling.
Doing a trivial jump from welding to global culture/economics, it can be pointed out that Scandinavian countries have an unusual level of trust in other people and their governments, which correlates well with economic and living-well measurements.
It also correlates well to NS2 sales per capita.
Just saying.
Anyone I have who isn't currently playing ns2 on my list but has it, their complaints have nothing to do with the game being complex, just that their computers cannot run it at desired framerates. In fact most of them think natural selection is one of the best teamplay games to come out in ages
The stuff from the BT is learned pretty quickly, even quicker if someone explains everything to you while you're playing it. The only things that take some time to learn is the bhop for skulk, but once you get it down it's pretty much another muscle memory mechanic. The lerk hasn't changed much but feels better, you'll get that quick, and the new fade is much easier for new players to pick up on, while giving veterans enough to still be effective with it (however I don't know if they're going to keep vanilla fade or this one, since vanilla fade is so well done already). If anything this should spark interest from those players to keep on playing. Heck I don't even launch the game anymore unless I'm joining BT to be honest, it feels so much more flavorfull than the vanilla game atm. Even if half of the matches are completely one sided. I'm still enjoying it more
UWE needs to have faith in the kind of game they're trying to make and do what's right for gameplay. The players will follow. It is a myth that complicated games can't be successful - just look at DotA 2, one of the most complicated multiplayer games on Steam and also the most successful by a large margin.
Requiring marines to weld eachother enhances teamwork and makes the game more fun for people that are tolerant of a certain level of complexity. People who are not tolerant of that probably wouldn't have been lasting fans of NS2 anyway.
Is the idea of using a welder to... get this... weld a teammate in a heavily team oriented game REALLY soo difficult that newbies will be completly baffled by the concept?
Jeez folks, not every new player is completely foreign to the idea of having to use team work.
I remember in the beta or w/e when they did remove armor armory regeneration, it was harsh at first but everybody adapted and it was quite fun honestly.
I dont think its a problem normally. Its such a minor issue. But ns2 is full of these kinds of things that you just have to know. For the longest time, i had no idea why the armory wouldn't heal me, until i realized that i have to be looking at it for it to work. And that was AFTER I had watched a few tutorial videos on how the game works.
I should clarify. The issue I have at this point is Fades and Onos are still 50/75 res. Fades still require three hits to kill a Marine and die just as easy as an Exo assuming no research. I know once they have Shadowstep they are gods, but they take research. Railguns get to still oneshot Slulks no matter the occasion. This is not to say I disagree with the state the Marines are in, I just wish it was more comparable on the Alien side if they have the lead, or increasing how long it takes to get Proto.
That's why it was cut.
It wasn't hugely successful outside of organized play.. In fact it was just a nerf through confusion and frustration for rookies. It lasted a whole one patch.
No feedback or communication was implemented at the time, so it was incredibly frustrating and this was largely the reason for it's failure. (flash backs of tiered bite cones)
Now that you can see who needs welding, audio and visual cues have been added, its in a much better shape.
But i still don't think it should be implemented without complete and proper communication and feedback :
All that's remaining is allowing the player to manually ask for a weld so the micless souls out there don't have to desperately jump up and down in front of a marine hoping the other notices the weld icon. (even if he doesn't have one, so that he knows to go buy one) also having a more clear feedback of successfully welding so that it can be tracked by peripheral would be nice, ala medic gun. (but with way less clutter)
I don't remember there being any complaints that it was confusing or unintuitive. It was a nerf at a time when marines were already in pretty bad shape performance-wise. The design arguments were exactly the same ones we're seeing now from both sides, and it was removed before the community had any chance to adapt.
*what do you attribute to making it a nerf anyhow, not that I disagree?
? I'm not sure what you mean, removing armor healing from the armory is a nerf no matter how you look at it. It takes time to adapt because players have learned from the current behavior that they can simply return to base at any time to repair their armor without needing to stay near teammates. However I don't think there's anything inherently unintuitive about it. Either the armory heals armor or it doesn't, neither is more intuitive than the other. If it had been this way from the beginning, no one would think it was strange. Welders no longer need to be researched, so anyone at an armory can look at its menu and know how armor is repaired.
If that were true though players would have figured that out after the first time they put their face into an armory that week, and would require no further adapting?
But that didn't happen because much more was missing, imo, like visual cues on the HUD and audio, not to mention the range and tolerance for welding players was very narrow, and at that time there was no "on entity" effects like that nice subtle glow of blue you see now. So only vets picked up on what was needed.
The concept might have been sound, but if the implementation failed, then the house of cards fall and the mechanic is therefore viewed as unintuitive.
Unintuitive play means the rookies didn't understand how to weld, (go to armory) then they didn't understand when to weld, (very little cues) then they had no method of requesting a weld (still not implemented).
That's how it failed on all fronts, basically, imo. And that's where i see a lack of intuitive implementation in the past.
But like i said, most of those problems have been fixed (Save for the two i mentioned) so i don't think it would have nearly the downsides as it did before, in public settings.
oooohhh, yeah. Completely slipped my mind. Sorry. Yeah it was like that when I played but just forgot. Something somebody said about being locked into an upgrade cause the comm hadn't researched it threw me off.
It seemed very silly that such a change was reverted after barely any testing because of what appeared to be a negative vocal minority that wasn't even as loud as the ones shouting to keep it.
Agreed. I really don't like that marines get Flamethrowers and Grenade Launchers basically for free once they upgraded to an AA.
It's also a cutdown in their tech cost, so more res that they can spend on the (also cheaper) Proto Lab upgrades. I don't suggest a direct increase of the AA upgrade cost -that would hamper the spread of AA to a second or third base- but perhaps introduce another upgrade "Advanced Weapons" in the Advanced Armory that consists of Flamethrowers and Grenade Launchers in one pack. That way none of them is really left behind and you can still balance the costs and research time independently without having to worry about the impacts that it would have on the tech progression towards a Prototype Lab.
I also think that research times could be incorporated a lot more into balancing (the pretty long research time for Nanoshield is a good example) than they currently are, but I guess they are currently kept short to give marines the chance to react to higher alien lifeforms in time. Still, the idea of having a longer timer ticking down before such a shift of power like the Proto Lab upgrades hit the field is quite tempting.
Similar to super weapons in C&C: once you build a Ion Cannon Station, your opponent gets to see the 5 minute countdown before your superweapon is ready to fire, thus putting him under pressure to do something about it. When aliens recognize a Proto Lab in a marine base, they should be scared that they have only X more minutes until marines get a lot more powerful. When the countdown is too short, it often means that marines already get that power before aliens even see the Proto Lab for the first time - taking away any feeling of "hey guys, we need to prevent these upgrades somehow" and "hey guys, we need to hold out somehow until the upgrades are ready" on the respective teams.
Another factor that probably plays into that too is that the only way to prevent the upgrade is to destroy the structure in time. Imho you should also be able to stop the upgrade process by destroying the prerequisites for the upgrade. For instance should destroying the second CC cause any upgrade process in the Proto Lab to be on ice until marines manage to rebuild the CC, rather than just continuing the research regardless. Likewise should taking the power away from a structure not automatically cancel the upgrade process but only stop it as well.
Same for alien upgrades that are being researched while aliens lose a Hive.
Scripts are still a scourge on the game and I do not understand why people think the ability to click fast is a real skill.
Besides, automatic pistols is just not in the spirit of NS.
Scripts are still a scourge on the game and I do not understand why people think the ability to click fast is a real skill. I know that people will attempt to use spirit as the reason the change should not happen, but balance and design should overtake spirit.
The spirit of NS does not live in the rapid clicking of a mouse button. If what you mean to say is that NS1 didn't do it that way, that's true, but who cares?
Let's face it, the pistol is a really difficult weapon to use effectively. Harder than any other weapon the marines have by an order of magnitude - most players are just absolutely useless with it. I don't see any reason why it should be this way. Yes it's a secondary weapon, but it should be weaker because of that, not miss 9 shots out of 10.
I don't think players being useless is a good reason to skill floor it so it becomes a pseudo high damage, low clipsize lmg. That's really all automatic pistol is (I'm useless with pistol myself so this isn't elitist motivated). Like you say, its a difficult weapon to master, and i think that in itself is reason to keep it manual fire.
People are always going to want mechanic changes that artificially make them better at the game, whether they realise it or not. The hard part is objectively asking how massive skill floors like automatic pistols affect game balance across skill levels, what changes would then be required to rebalance, and whether you end up doing harm to NS's unique primary/secondary weapon usage. Where pistol isn't just the weapon of last resort like in your typical shooter.
TL;DR
The contextual issue was pistol scripting, and automation is not by any stretch of the imagination a solution but rather an unrelated additional feature. One that i wouldn't want to see implemented for certain reasons. A real solution would be fixing the 100ms min refire rate so that it actually works reliably and all that.
Except this doesn't fix the biggest issue. A script can fire every .1 second without requiring to rapidly click your mouse possible making you miss shots. People can fluctuate between .1-.3 as well when they are spamming. As this is the case when scripts are the best in every situation, it needs to be fixed.
i think this feature of the balance mod didn't get enough attention yet. its quite a big change for the alien tech tree and most people seem to accept it (which is a good thing) but im still unsure which variation I should use in the end. So far 2 options have been tested:
a) currently active. upgrading bio mass is relatively cheap, but you need in addition to research each ability individually
b) got tested some weeks ago, bio mass is more expensive but you get the abilities automatically
as i see it, the advantage of option a) is that you (sometimes) can be a bit more creative as alien commander. you can make a few more decisions, like "tunnel + bile bomb first or leap" or save most of your resources and go instead for umbra and shadow step (and help your skulks with passive upgrades and drifters until then). the abilities are relatively cheap, to promote the alien comm to research the abilities in a given order, but its not mandatory
option b follows the philosophy of "remove the illusion of choice" (as some people call it). you can no longer decide if you want tunnels or leap first, they unlock automatically as you level up the bio mass. this has the big advantage of no ability being ever left behind, so essentially it shifts a decision a comm makes (which class to upgrade) to the field player (which life form to evolve to). instead of "which" ability to research, the important factors are "when" and "where"
a)
pros:
- more choices
- keeps the alien comm busy
cons:
- many choices are not meaningful (you dont want to delay leap by that much in favor of shadow step or stomp since nobody has resources for fade / onos yet)
- invitation to a cookie cutter build (and therefor "newbie trap"?)
b)
pros:
- decision which hive to upgrade (and when) is more meaningful, since bio mass costs are higher
- field players can always play their favorite life form and never need to beg the comm to "research umbra plx!"
- low harvester count strategies are not possible anymore, since you always need to go through the full tech tree and would fall behind otherwise
cons:
- alien comm is less busy, less choices