I also find it funny that people think that the removal of glancing bites is going to make the game less intuitive for new players, yet it's actually less intuitive to have different damage numbers pop up depending on some not very obvious conditions like bite cone AND distance to the enemy.
The concept is sound and would be better for new players while not effecting skilled ones.
It being only half implemented though, is what hurt all players, however.
Shame.
No. Glancing bites just makes the game more complicated for new players and adds unneeded frustration to playing Aliens. I can't even comprehend the number of times I've heard someone say "I bit him (number) ****ing times and he didn't die!". I know of people that have quit the game because of glancing bites, and, as an experienced player, I have no way to accurately tell new players how many bites it will take to kill a Marine.
If there is anything in the mod that I truly love, it is the removal of glancing bites.
I always worried about glancing bites on structures, even if the numbers seemed right, how could I be sure?
There are glancing bites on structures (at least, there are on Phase Gates and Extractors). For Phase Gates, you get glancing bites whenever you bite the actual phasing portal and not the structure.
There are glancing bites on structures (at least, there are on Phase Gates and Extractors). For Phase Gates, you get glancing bites whenever you bite the actual phasing portal and not the structure.
Are you talking about in the balance mod or in live game?
I know glancing bites on structures is in live game... and it's annoying. Can easily tell when the damage numbers go up in increments of 25 or 50 instead of 75.
There are glancing bites on structures (at least, there are on Phase Gates and Extractors). For Phase Gates, you get glancing bites whenever you bite the actual phasing portal and not the structure.
Are you talking about in the balance mod or in live game?
I know glancing bites on structures is in live game... and it's annoying. Can easily tell when the damage numbers go up in increments of 25 or 50 instead of 75.
I cant wait. I always felt like removing bhoping was a bad move which lowered the skillcap of the game. It sacrificed something funny in order to appease people who didnt bother to learn how to use it.
The changes to alien tech also opens up new possibilities. Alien gameplay in comp games is / was terrible. You have literally no choices with the current tech. If you dont go craig -> cara with the first hive you're fucked. Hopefully this will change with the patch. At the very least it'll open up for more choices which will hopefully lead to at least a few viable ones.
I'm sorry but what? The game is changing for the better; and not all of it is confirmed (or any of it?)
This won't affect pub play at all really, the game is still played the same way just the progression is different. Aliens now have many options on what to do, and marines can now receive their upper tech quicker. Not to mention the welder starts enforces more teamplay
let me put it to you this way
casual vs casual = the same
competitive vs competitive = the same
It can be enjoyed by both, what exactly is changing for you as a "public player" (I'd say I'm a public player as well, just with a more competitive background) that this doesn't sound right to you? please explain
Dont assume that your opinions are the only ones. The vocal minority like to come here to complain about anything and everything but the majority prefer to actually....you know.... play the game.
I love the game as it is. It may need a few tweaks (imo) and optimisations still but its my favourite game.
I still don't see your point, the game will play the same, the major difference you'd see is that now you get both you upgrades with a single spur/shell/veil, but require three of them in total for the max benefit. That and phantom has been combined for silence + camo and a new ability aura, armories no longer heal armor which enforces welding of team mates and welders are a starter item now for pres only, glancing bites removed etc.. obviously my opinion isn't the only one but what is changing so much that you'd stop playing the game? Really lost here; swapping from vanilla to BT almost every time I play and I'm still playing the same, only thing is now my skulk is no longer a piece of cement and marine shooting feels 10x better. I actually 100% prefer BT over the regular game atm and BT is the first thing I look for in the server browser
I never said in my post I would stop playing the game. No idea where you got that from.
Three changes I dont like:
1. Bhop in any shape or form. I never feel like my Skulk is made of cement. I think it feels perfect and with Celerity its even better imo. Any form of speed boost now would make Aliens more powerful and they win slightly more matches atm so balance would tip more to them and Skulk base rushes would become a problem again too. The skilled players would simply become even better and the gap between those and the casual players (the vast majority) would increase with more frustration and less fun for those players. I like to mention the word "fun" in my posts as most forget that games are meant to be fun. Getting ripped to bits time and again by the few with the time to play hours every day is not fun. Most of us have jobs, school, college, family and a life away from the mouse and keyboard. Charlie always said bhop would never be in NS2 so this is a surprise tbh.
2. Glancing bite. I think it was one of the best things UW did with NS2. It makes attacking more dynamic and gives more options. I like to parasite, run in and get one full bite then use the walls to run up and and jump off at the marine and use glancing bite as I pass making it harder to be shot at. It also gives the less skilled a chance to do some damage and feel they are helping their team. I have over 1000 hours in and am still average at best. Glancing bite evens helps the likes of me have fun with the game.
3. Armouries giving armour. As a marine I already spend a lot of time building, defending builds, repairing etc. Marines should be claiming territory and attacking hives not spending most of the game running around with welder like a scene from the end of show Benny Hill sketch. And anyway, players who buy a welder to help team mates and repair will still do it but doubt those that dont will start because of this change. It would make forward bases with an armoury a lot less useful too which are all too easily taken out anyway especially once bile bomb is out.
Some of the other changes you mention I cant really comment on in respect of upgrades as I dont know enough about them. I would have to play with those changes first before saying anything.
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
There are glancing bites on structures (at least, there are on Phase Gates and Extractors). For Phase Gates, you get glancing bites whenever you bite the actual phasing portal and not the structure.
Are you talking about in the balance mod or in live game?
I know glancing bites on structures is in live game... and it's annoying. Can easily tell when the damage numbers go up in increments of 25 or 50 instead of 75.
Or you can just turn a local server, turn on cheats, alltech, build a pg and bite it. Then you can watch all those nice, clean 75 pts hits show up. Try as you may, you won't be able to get a 25 or 50 to show up.
Glancing bites for structures were removed ages (3-4 months? ago).
I'm sorry but what? The game is changing for the better; and not all of it is confirmed (or any of it?)
This won't affect pub play at all really, the game is still played the same way just the progression is different. Aliens now have many options on what to do, and marines can now receive their upper tech quicker. Not to mention the welder starts enforces more teamplay
let me put it to you this way
casual vs casual = the same
competitive vs competitive = the same
It can be enjoyed by both, what exactly is changing for you as a "public player" (I'd say I'm a public player as well, just with a more competitive background) that this doesn't sound right to you? please explain
Dont assume that your opinions are the only ones. The vocal minority like to come here to complain about anything and everything but the majority prefer to actually....you know.... play the game.
I love the game as it is. It may need a few tweaks (imo) and optimisations still but its my favourite game.
I still don't see your point, the game will play the same, the major difference you'd see is that now you get both you upgrades with a single spur/shell/veil, but require three of them in total for the max benefit. That and phantom has been combined for silence + camo and a new ability aura, armories no longer heal armor which enforces welding of team mates and welders are a starter item now for pres only, glancing bites removed etc.. obviously my opinion isn't the only one but what is changing so much that you'd stop playing the game? Really lost here; swapping from vanilla to BT almost every time I play and I'm still playing the same, only thing is now my skulk is no longer a piece of cement and marine shooting feels 10x better. I actually 100% prefer BT over the regular game atm and BT is the first thing I look for in the server browser
I never said in my post I would stop playing the game. No idea where you got that from.
Three changes I dont like:
1. Bhop in any shape or form. I never feel like my Skulk is made of cement. I think it feels perfect and with Celerity its even better imo. Any form of speed boost now would make Aliens more powerful and they win slightly more matches atm so balance would tip more to them and Skulk base rushes would become a problem again too. The skilled players would simply become even better and the gap between those and the casual players (the vast majority) would increase with more frustration and less fun for those players. I like to mention the word "fun" in my posts as most forget that games are meant to be fun. Getting ripped to bits time and again by the few with the time to play hours every day is not fun. Most of us have jobs, school, college, family and a life away from the mouse and keyboard. Charlie always said bhop would never be in NS2 so this is a surprise tbh.
2. Glancing bite. I think it was one of the best things UW did with NS2. It makes attacking more dynamic and gives more options. I like to parasite, run in and get one full bite then use the walls to run up and and jump off at the marine and use glancing bite as I pass making it harder to be shot at. It also gives the less skilled a chance to do some damage and feel they are helping their team. I have over 1000 hours in and am still average at best. Glancing bite evens helps the likes of me have fun with the game.
3. Armouries giving armour. As a marine I already spend a lot of time building, defending builds, repairing etc. Marines should be claiming territory and attacking hives not spending most of the game running around with welder like a scene from the end of show Benny Hill sketch. And anyway, players who buy a welder to help team mates and repair will still do it but doubt those that dont will start because of this change. It would make forward bases with an armoury a lot less useful too which are all too easily taken out anyway especially once bile bomb is out.
Some of the other changes you mention I cant really comment on in respect of upgrades as I dont know enough about them. I would have to play with those changes first before saying anything.
1) It would add another layer to the skulk, because in the base game you need something to keep up with the jumping marines.... many times you get the jump on them, to have them just jump and you're unable to keep up, so adding something that keeps you close is good, helping with speed.
2) I agree to an extent, though it is rookie friendly, I don't really see people going crazy in-game saying "damn those glancing bites".... I guess the only complaint is that it those make it too easy in some cases and I like many others do like higher difficulty, but as I said, not really bothered either way.
3) This is a really needed, too many times have I've seen people lose pushes because they kept running back and getting killed or letting their teammate die, also there's a reason why good teams use welders, because the attack stays strong, with decent meds, aliens can not do much.
Armories are already camp cities as-well, which don't help pushes.
But you argue that people won't change but they do, when I play the balance mod, people just do it, because it's dumb not to and attacks as I said earlier last longer, also save quite a bit of res, not building armories everywhere.
I do believe people over-hype the changes, most are still based of the main game, no real changes to be had, just variations of the same thing.
There are glancing bites on structures (at least, there are on Phase Gates and Extractors). For Phase Gates, you get glancing bites whenever you bite the actual phasing portal and not the structure.
Are you talking about in the balance mod or in live game?
I know glancing bites on structures is in live game... and it's annoying. Can easily tell when the damage numbers go up in increments of 25 or 50 instead of 75.
Or you can just turn a local server, turn on cheats, alltech, build a pg and bite it. Then you can watch all those nice, clean 75 pts hits show up. Try as you may, you won't be able to get a 25 or 50 to show up.
Glancing bites for structures were removed ages (3-4 months? ago).
But the legend lives on.
So are you saying that when you see a 25 or 50 as a skulk biting a PG, it's actually a 75, no matter the value of the draw damage function?
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
I didnt play the mod much. There things i like and things i dont like.
But before releasing this light-speed skulks improve the performance:
Between mid and engame the game feels so horrible. 40fps feels like 10fps. At some points its unplayble for me and everyone i ask (i thought my pc has issues), telling the same.
So before introducing hyper speed skulks, bring the game to constant 60fps.
60fps from beginning to the bitter end !!!
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
There are glancing bites on structures (at least, there are on Phase Gates and Extractors). For Phase Gates, you get glancing bites whenever you bite the actual phasing portal and not the structure.
Are you talking about in the balance mod or in live game?
I know glancing bites on structures is in live game... and it's annoying. Can easily tell when the damage numbers go up in increments of 25 or 50 instead of 75.
Or you can just turn a local server, turn on cheats, alltech, build a pg and bite it. Then you can watch all those nice, clean 75 pts hits show up. Try as you may, you won't be able to get a 25 or 50 to show up.
Glancing bites for structures were removed ages (3-4 months? ago).
But the legend lives on.
So are you saying that when you see a 25 or 50 as a skulk biting a PG, it's actually a 75, no matter the value of the draw damage function?
No. The damage number is real.
With a bit of further digging, the culprit turns on to be NS2Stats. NS2Stats overrides the PerformGradualMeleeAttack() method in order to extract some stats from it, and it uses the old unpatched version.
So if you play on a server with NS2Stats installed, you DO get glancing bites on buildings.
Sorry for the confusion, and my apologies to anyone that started to doubt their eyes ... :-/
No comments on the actual gameplay and what it needs, but I wish people would get over the bloody fear of the word bhop. You probably couldn't sell pure gold if it was labeled as bhop because people go NONONONO!! every time the word is even mentioned.
You don't like something about bhop? Fine, let's see if we can cut that bad part off and see if we can make the thing work for you. If you can coexist with a game with wallhop in it, I'm fairly sure you can coexist with a game with well designed bhop system in it.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Ah and btw. watching the video i posted above remember me the 1st trys of "skillmovement" in the beta. In the end it was very abusable and thank god it was removed @ 1 point.
Im sure the current implementation in BT has the potential to be abusable too.
With a bit of further digging, the culprit turns on to be NS2Stats. NS2Stats overrides the PerformGradualMeleeAttack() method in order to extract some stats from it, and it uses the old unpatched version.
So if you play on a server with NS2Stats installed, you DO get glancing bites on buildings.
Sorry for the confusion, and my apologies to anyone that started to doubt their eyes ... :-/
There are glancing bites on structures (at least, there are on Phase Gates and Extractors). For Phase Gates, you get glancing bites whenever you bite the actual phasing portal and not the structure.
Are you talking about in the balance mod or in live game?
I know glancing bites on structures is in live game... and it's annoying. Can easily tell when the damage numbers go up in increments of 25 or 50 instead of 75.
Or you can just turn a local server, turn on cheats, alltech, build a pg and bite it. Then you can watch all those nice, clean 75 pts hits show up. Try as you may, you won't be able to get a 25 or 50 to show up.
Glancing bites for structures were removed ages (3-4 months? ago).
But the legend lives on.
So are you saying that when you see a 25 or 50 as a skulk biting a PG, it's actually a 75, no matter the value of the draw damage function?
No. The damage number is real.
With a bit of further digging, the culprit turns on to be NS2Stats. NS2Stats overrides the PerformGradualMeleeAttack() method in order to extract some stats from it, and it uses the old unpatched version.
So if you play on a server with NS2Stats installed, you DO get glancing bites on buildings.
Sorry for the confusion, and my apologies to anyone that started to doubt their eyes ... :-/
There you go. For us competitive players glancing bites on buildings have been a very, very real annoyance.
The only thing I miss about Bhop was the speed increase getting around the map on my gorge. I think it took me all of a few hours to learn it, once I found a well written tutorial. I wouldn't mind it being in for skulks and gorges in NS2 in some form.
I still don't understand how to effectivly use wall jump to increase speed, it seems like it is actually more complicated to learn than Bhop, and half as useful.
For wall jumping from what I can tell, you need to plan a route, have appropriate level geometry, timed jumps, and aiming for the next spot. Where as Bhop was just strafe and jump timing.
A lot of the alien movement features are not very intutive.
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
No comments on the actual gameplay and what it needs, but I wish people would get over the bloody fear of the word bhop. You probably couldn't sell pure gold if it was labeled as bhop because people go NONONONO!! every time the word is even mentioned.
You don't like something about bhop? Fine, let's see if we can cut that bad part off and see if we can make the thing work for you. If you can coexist with a game with wallhop in it, I'm fairly sure you can coexist with a game with well designed bhop system in it.
bhop has a long story of being a weird, difficult and unituitive way of abusing a bug in the hl1 movement code to move faster than originally designed.
So using that name does give lots of people the creeps.
I'm quite certain that NS2 does not need bhop in that sense of the word, and I'm pretty sure that is what people are complaining about with the skulk movement system - they do not want a weird, difficult and unintuitive way of gaining extra speed.
Compare the way to get extra speed as a marine - you press the sprint key. As a skulk you need to ... well, try explain how to do it in 5 words... well, that's too much to require.
But IMHO, you really shouldn't need a 10 min tutorial video showing you how to move your mouse, touch walls at exactly the right angle and which keys to press and release in the right order in order to be a decent skulk.
A fun, self-explaining and easy to learn, hard to master movement system? Sure, I'm all for that... but I would not call that a bhop system.
No comments on the actual gameplay and what it needs, but I wish people would get over the bloody fear of the word bhop. You probably couldn't sell pure gold if it was labeled as bhop because people go NONONONO!! every time the word is even mentioned.
You don't like something about bhop? Fine, let's see if we can cut that bad part off and see if we can make the thing work for you. If you can coexist with a game with wallhop in it, I'm fairly sure you can coexist with a game with well designed bhop system in it.
bhop has a long story of being a weird, difficult and unituitive way of abusing a bug in the hl1 movement code to move faster than originally designed.
So using that name does give lots of people the creeps.
I'm quite certain that NS2 does not need bhop in that sense of the word, and I'm pretty sure that is what people are complaining about with the skulk movement system - they do not want a weird, difficult and unintuitive way of gaining extra speed.
Compare the way to get extra speed as a marine - you press the sprint key. As a skulk you need to ... well, try explain how to do it in 5 words... well, that's too much to require.
But IMHO, you really shouldn't need a 10 min tutorial video showing you how to move your mouse, touch walls at exactly the right angle and which keys to press and release in the right order in order to be a decent skulk.
A fun, self-explaining and easy to learn, hard to master movement system? Sure, I'm all for that... but I would not call that a bhop system.
Yes, I'm bloody well aware of all the unintuitiviness of the bhop. I can understand why it's not in the game.
What I'm against is thinking that bhop has to be an unintuitive system that requires 10 minutes of video tutorial to learn. Nobody has ever tried making it easier or finding middle ground. Any attempt of discussion is faced with a group bunkered up with the idea that bhop is something straight from hell and can't be changed in any way at all.
Probably the product of trying to make bhop intuitive wouldn't exactly be bhop, maybe the speed gain would be something closer to strafejumping or even something even more simplistic. That doesn't bother me even the slightest. What bothers me is that there's still refusal to even discuss anything that has a word bhop in it.
i dont quite see the bhop enthusiasts being as persecuted as you say - it seems they pretty much got their way considering the current movement....
There might be some reason why they're considering implementing it only now half a year after the release. And you can still see people protesting it's addition in any form regardless of the actual implementation.
Whatever gets implemented now, I wish people would try to change things through feedback first rather than going to the bunker mode right away.
bhop has a long story of being a weird, difficult and unituitive way of abusing a bug in the hl1 movement code to move faster than originally designed.
So using that name does give lots of people the creeps.
I'm quite certain that NS2 does not need bhop in that sense of the word, and I'm pretty sure that is what people are complaining about with the skulk movement system - they do not want a weird, difficult and unintuitive way of gaining extra speed.
Compare the way to get extra speed as a marine - you press the sprint key. As a skulk you need to ... well, try explain how to do it in 5 words... well, that's too much to require.
But IMHO, you really shouldn't need a 10 min tutorial video showing you how to move your mouse, touch walls at exactly the right angle and which keys to press and release in the right order in order to be a decent skulk.
A fun, self-explaining and easy to learn, hard to master movement system? Sure, I'm all for that... but I would not call that a bhop system.
No, the truth is that the resistance to bhop as a movement system is entirely irrational, and your post is just another link in that seemingly endless chain of posts propagating misinformation that others will consequently use to fuel their ignorance.
It has been said time and time again, and I will repeat it until my face turns blue: Bunnyhopping was not a "bug" in ns1, nor did anyone "abuse" it. It was deliberately left in the game for balance reasons and the devs even made a few minor changes to the game code to make it easier to use.
Catering to the lowest common denominator is by far the worst trend that has plagued the pc gaming community for the past 15 years. It is single-handedly the reason why 99/100 titles released today are bland garbage, not even worth a single playthrough. This ridiculous notion that everything should be easy for everyone always, is why we can't have nice things and it makes me sick.
As for the movement system in the balance mod, it is currently a sort of pseudo bunnyhop. It attempts to solve some of the problems associated with classic bunnyhopping, while somewhat keeping the features that makes bunnyhopping such a great movement system. I don't think it's entirely successful, particularly because some of the changes significantly dimnish the depth of bunnyhopping without resulting in any significant advantage in ease of learning. It is, however, the closest attempt we have at a movement system with any meaningful depth in ns2 so far.
Just out of curiousity, is there some reason a league match needs to run ns2stats?
It adds a lot of useful features, like "ready" to start the game, but I assume the primary reason is that it makes it possible to prove match results without having to take screenshots at just the right moment.
Catering to the lowest common denominator is by far the worst trend that has plagued the pc gaming community for the past 15 years. It is single-handedly the reason why 99/100 titles released today are bland garbage, not even worth a single playthrough. This ridiculous notion that everything should be easy for everyone always, is why we can't have nice things and it makes me sick.
But IMHO, you really shouldn't need a 10 min tutorial video showing you how to move your mouse, touch walls at exactly the right angle and which keys to press and release in the right order in order to be a decent skulk.
A fun, self-explaining and easy to learn, hard to master movement system? Sure, I'm all for that... but I would not call that a bhop system.
Conversely, some people, such as myself, find that introducing a complex and fiddly movement mechanic as a basic element of the game, as opposed to a move faster button, to be far more uninteresting because it takes time away from the bits of the game that are interesting.
Fighting is interesting, moving is not interesting, moving as a component of fighting is not very interesting, making one's skill at fighting be based heavily on one's ability to move using the fiddly movement system makes fighting, overall, less interesting.
It's like... if you have a sandwich, and movement is the bread. Some people really like bread, so they go and buy really weird and fancy breads with all different stuff in them, other people care about the filling so they buy all different cheeses and spreads and cuts of meat to put in their sandwiches. I care about the filling of the sandwich, and saying I have to learn bunnyhopping is like saying I have to eat granary bread with all the seeds and crap in, even though i don't like seeds and crap in my bread, I just want simple white bread to hold my sandwich together so I can enjoy the filling.
So I like simple, unintrusive movement mechanics to get me from place to place, so I can concentrate on the meat of the action. I don't want to be concentrating on pressing buttons in precise sequence and learning about momentum and stuff, I just want to press a button to go in a direction, and that is the sum total of my interest in movement mechanics. They are there to perform a function, not to be the focus of the game. I don't find games based around movement to be enjoyable, really, unless it's super mario and even then I want plenty of powerups to play with.
For me, one of the best improvements in FPS gaming was the invention of other forms of gameplay that don't revolve entirely around quake-style movement mechanics. I don't mind quake and UT, but I prefer games like stalker, which rewards intelligent planning and good use of cover and picking the right weapons and equipment for the job. I like games like the brothers in arms series which turns encounters into a sort of puzzle, where you have to find the right way to flank the enemy with your soldiers and set them up in the right cover, to support each other and that sort of thing. I even like the original calls of duty, when they came out they were a wonderful new approach to FPS gaming, very different from the quake-style shooters we'd had before.
The overabundance of crap shooters is not due to a lack of bunnyhopping, it's because crap games are easier to make than good games. There's an overabundance of crap games in every genre and many of them suffer from overcomplication and bad design as much as excessive 'dumbing down' of mechanics. Arguing that the marginalization of bunnyhopping is some sort of gaming original-sin is silly.
Bunnyhopping is not 'better' it's just different, and it's a difference not everyone shares an enthusiasm for.
Conversely, some people, such as myself, find that introducing a complex and fiddly movement mechanic as a basic element of the game, as opposed to a move faster button, to be far more uninteresting because it takes time away from the bits of the game that are interesting.
Fighting is interesting, moving is not interesting, moving as a component of fighting is not very interesting, making one's skill at fighting be based heavily on one's ability to move using the fiddly movement system makes fighting, overall, less interesting.
It's like... if you have a sandwich, and movement is the bread. Some people really like bread, other people care about the filling. I care about the filling of the sandwich, and saying I have to learn bunnyhopping is like saying I have to eat granary bread with all the seeds and crap in, even though i don't like seeds and crap in my bread, I just want simple white bread to hold my sandwich together so I can enjoy the filling, so I like simple, unintrusive movement mechanics to get me from place to place, so I can concentrate on the meat of the action. I don't want to be concentrating on pressing buttons in precise sequence and learning about momentum and stuff, I just want to press a button to go in a direction, and that is the sum total of my interest in movement mechanics.
Uh, your whole post can be counter-argued by telling you that you can still play skulk the way you played it previously, marines have nothing new in the movement aspect that you'd be forced to do this new stuff as a skulk, it's simply something that's there
Again, bringing this point up
Casual player vs Casual player = the same
Competitive player vs competitive player = the same
Competitive player vs casual player = not the same, same in the current version, and same in the balance test version
Comments
No. Glancing bites just makes the game more complicated for new players and adds unneeded frustration to playing Aliens. I can't even comprehend the number of times I've heard someone say "I bit him (number) ****ing times and he didn't die!". I know of people that have quit the game because of glancing bites, and, as an experienced player, I have no way to accurately tell new players how many bites it will take to kill a Marine.
If there is anything in the mod that I truly love, it is the removal of glancing bites.
There are glancing bites on structures (at least, there are on Phase Gates and Extractors). For Phase Gates, you get glancing bites whenever you bite the actual phasing portal and not the structure.
Are you talking about in the balance mod or in live game?
I know glancing bites on structures is in live game... and it's annoying. Can easily tell when the damage numbers go up in increments of 25 or 50 instead of 75.
Live.
The changes to alien tech also opens up new possibilities. Alien gameplay in comp games is / was terrible. You have literally no choices with the current tech. If you dont go craig -> cara with the first hive you're fucked. Hopefully this will change with the patch. At the very least it'll open up for more choices which will hopefully lead to at least a few viable ones.
I never said in my post I would stop playing the game. No idea where you got that from.
Three changes I dont like:
1. Bhop in any shape or form. I never feel like my Skulk is made of cement. I think it feels perfect and with Celerity its even better imo. Any form of speed boost now would make Aliens more powerful and they win slightly more matches atm so balance would tip more to them and Skulk base rushes would become a problem again too. The skilled players would simply become even better and the gap between those and the casual players (the vast majority) would increase with more frustration and less fun for those players. I like to mention the word "fun" in my posts as most forget that games are meant to be fun. Getting ripped to bits time and again by the few with the time to play hours every day is not fun. Most of us have jobs, school, college, family and a life away from the mouse and keyboard. Charlie always said bhop would never be in NS2 so this is a surprise tbh.
2. Glancing bite. I think it was one of the best things UW did with NS2. It makes attacking more dynamic and gives more options. I like to parasite, run in and get one full bite then use the walls to run up and and jump off at the marine and use glancing bite as I pass making it harder to be shot at. It also gives the less skilled a chance to do some damage and feel they are helping their team. I have over 1000 hours in and am still average at best. Glancing bite evens helps the likes of me have fun with the game.
3. Armouries giving armour. As a marine I already spend a lot of time building, defending builds, repairing etc. Marines should be claiming territory and attacking hives not spending most of the game running around with welder like a scene from the end of show Benny Hill sketch. And anyway, players who buy a welder to help team mates and repair will still do it but doubt those that dont will start because of this change. It would make forward bases with an armoury a lot less useful too which are all too easily taken out anyway especially once bile bomb is out.
Some of the other changes you mention I cant really comment on in respect of upgrades as I dont know enough about them. I would have to play with those changes first before saying anything.
Or you can just turn a local server, turn on cheats, alltech, build a pg and bite it. Then you can watch all those nice, clean 75 pts hits show up. Try as you may, you won't be able to get a 25 or 50 to show up.
Glancing bites for structures were removed ages (3-4 months? ago).
But the legend lives on.
1) It would add another layer to the skulk, because in the base game you need something to keep up with the jumping marines.... many times you get the jump on them, to have them just jump and you're unable to keep up, so adding something that keeps you close is good, helping with speed.
2) I agree to an extent, though it is rookie friendly, I don't really see people going crazy in-game saying "damn those glancing bites".... I guess the only complaint is that it those make it too easy in some cases and I like many others do like higher difficulty, but as I said, not really bothered either way.
3) This is a really needed, too many times have I've seen people lose pushes because they kept running back and getting killed or letting their teammate die, also there's a reason why good teams use welders, because the attack stays strong, with decent meds, aliens can not do much.
Armories are already camp cities as-well, which don't help pushes.
But you argue that people won't change but they do, when I play the balance mod, people just do it, because it's dumb not to and attacks as I said earlier last longer, also save quite a bit of res, not building armories everywhere.
I do believe people over-hype the changes, most are still based of the main game, no real changes to be had, just variations of the same thing.
So are you saying that when you see a 25 or 50 as a skulk biting a PG, it's actually a 75, no matter the value of the draw damage function?
But before releasing this light-speed skulks improve the performance:
Between mid and engame the game feels so horrible. 40fps feels like 10fps. At some points its unplayble for me and everyone i ask (i thought my pc has issues), telling the same.
So before introducing hyper speed skulks, bring the game to constant 60fps.
60fps from beginning to the bitter end !!!
No. The damage number is real.
With a bit of further digging, the culprit turns on to be NS2Stats. NS2Stats overrides the PerformGradualMeleeAttack() method in order to extract some stats from it, and it uses the old unpatched version.
So if you play on a server with NS2Stats installed, you DO get glancing bites on buildings.
Sorry for the confusion, and my apologies to anyone that started to doubt their eyes ... :-/
You don't like something about bhop? Fine, let's see if we can cut that bad part off and see if we can make the thing work for you. If you can coexist with a game with wallhop in it, I'm fairly sure you can coexist with a game with well designed bhop system in it.
Im sure the current implementation in BT has the potential to be abusable too.
Anyway here is the video with some beta footage:
bleh.... stupid NS2stats.....
There you go. For us competitive players glancing bites on buildings have been a very, very real annoyance.
I still don't understand how to effectivly use wall jump to increase speed, it seems like it is actually more complicated to learn than Bhop, and half as useful.
For wall jumping from what I can tell, you need to plan a route, have appropriate level geometry, timed jumps, and aiming for the next spot. Where as Bhop was just strafe and jump timing.
A lot of the alien movement features are not very intutive.
bhop has a long story of being a weird, difficult and unituitive way of abusing a bug in the hl1 movement code to move faster than originally designed.
So using that name does give lots of people the creeps.
I'm quite certain that NS2 does not need bhop in that sense of the word, and I'm pretty sure that is what people are complaining about with the skulk movement system - they do not want a weird, difficult and unintuitive way of gaining extra speed.
Compare the way to get extra speed as a marine - you press the sprint key. As a skulk you need to ... well, try explain how to do it in 5 words... well, that's too much to require.
But IMHO, you really shouldn't need a 10 min tutorial video showing you how to move your mouse, touch walls at exactly the right angle and which keys to press and release in the right order in order to be a decent skulk.
A fun, self-explaining and easy to learn, hard to master movement system? Sure, I'm all for that... but I would not call that a bhop system.
What I'm against is thinking that bhop has to be an unintuitive system that requires 10 minutes of video tutorial to learn. Nobody has ever tried making it easier or finding middle ground. Any attempt of discussion is faced with a group bunkered up with the idea that bhop is something straight from hell and can't be changed in any way at all.
Probably the product of trying to make bhop intuitive wouldn't exactly be bhop, maybe the speed gain would be something closer to strafejumping or even something even more simplistic. That doesn't bother me even the slightest. What bothers me is that there's still refusal to even discuss anything that has a word bhop in it.
Just out of curiousity, is there some reason a league match needs to run ns2stats?
Whatever gets implemented now, I wish people would try to change things through feedback first rather than going to the bunker mode right away.
It has been said time and time again, and I will repeat it until my face turns blue: Bunnyhopping was not a "bug" in ns1, nor did anyone "abuse" it. It was deliberately left in the game for balance reasons and the devs even made a few minor changes to the game code to make it easier to use.
Comparing the difficulty of learning bunnyhopping to the difficulty of using sprint is telling. Sure, pressing a button to gain extra speed is a lot easier. It also happens to be infinitely less interesting. Sprint, as a movement mechanic, adds close to nothing to gameplay. Compare that to bunnyhopping, which adds a huge range of options in gameplay, makes balancing for different skill levels easier, and significantly extends replayability.
Catering to the lowest common denominator is by far the worst trend that has plagued the pc gaming community for the past 15 years. It is single-handedly the reason why 99/100 titles released today are bland garbage, not even worth a single playthrough. This ridiculous notion that everything should be easy for everyone always, is why we can't have nice things and it makes me sick.
As for the movement system in the balance mod, it is currently a sort of pseudo bunnyhop. It attempts to solve some of the problems associated with classic bunnyhopping, while somewhat keeping the features that makes bunnyhopping such a great movement system. I don't think it's entirely successful, particularly because some of the changes significantly dimnish the depth of bunnyhopping without resulting in any significant advantage in ease of learning. It is, however, the closest attempt we have at a movement system with any meaningful depth in ns2 so far.
It adds a lot of useful features, like "ready" to start the game, but I assume the primary reason is that it makes it possible to prove match results without having to take screenshots at just the right moment.
I love you so much right now.
Hey I worked hard on those videos
Fighting is interesting, moving is not interesting, moving as a component of fighting is not very interesting, making one's skill at fighting be based heavily on one's ability to move using the fiddly movement system makes fighting, overall, less interesting.
It's like... if you have a sandwich, and movement is the bread. Some people really like bread, so they go and buy really weird and fancy breads with all different stuff in them, other people care about the filling so they buy all different cheeses and spreads and cuts of meat to put in their sandwiches. I care about the filling of the sandwich, and saying I have to learn bunnyhopping is like saying I have to eat granary bread with all the seeds and crap in, even though i don't like seeds and crap in my bread, I just want simple white bread to hold my sandwich together so I can enjoy the filling.
So I like simple, unintrusive movement mechanics to get me from place to place, so I can concentrate on the meat of the action. I don't want to be concentrating on pressing buttons in precise sequence and learning about momentum and stuff, I just want to press a button to go in a direction, and that is the sum total of my interest in movement mechanics. They are there to perform a function, not to be the focus of the game. I don't find games based around movement to be enjoyable, really, unless it's super mario and even then I want plenty of powerups to play with.
For me, one of the best improvements in FPS gaming was the invention of other forms of gameplay that don't revolve entirely around quake-style movement mechanics. I don't mind quake and UT, but I prefer games like stalker, which rewards intelligent planning and good use of cover and picking the right weapons and equipment for the job. I like games like the brothers in arms series which turns encounters into a sort of puzzle, where you have to find the right way to flank the enemy with your soldiers and set them up in the right cover, to support each other and that sort of thing. I even like the original calls of duty, when they came out they were a wonderful new approach to FPS gaming, very different from the quake-style shooters we'd had before.
The overabundance of crap shooters is not due to a lack of bunnyhopping, it's because crap games are easier to make than good games. There's an overabundance of crap games in every genre and many of them suffer from overcomplication and bad design as much as excessive 'dumbing down' of mechanics. Arguing that the marginalization of bunnyhopping is some sort of gaming original-sin is silly.
Bunnyhopping is not 'better' it's just different, and it's a difference not everyone shares an enthusiasm for.
Uh, your whole post can be counter-argued by telling you that you can still play skulk the way you played it previously, marines have nothing new in the movement aspect that you'd be forced to do this new stuff as a skulk, it's simply something that's there
Again, bringing this point up
Casual player vs Casual player = the same
Competitive player vs competitive player = the same
Competitive player vs casual player = not the same, same in the current version, and same in the balance test version