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
That patently cannot be true, if you give skulks a powerful and effective new movement option which is difficult to use, then skulks have to be balanced around that. If a skulk can bunnyhop and receive a significant buff from it, then either skulks become overpowered when they use it, or they are underpowered without it.
Either the game would be spoiled for marines because of super skulks, or the game would be spoiled for skulks who don't bunnyhop because they suck without it.
Or, I suppose, bunnyhopping is not actually important and not really all that worth doing because it confers minimal actual benefit, in which case the whole argument pushing for its introduction is somewhat moot.
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.
It took me 10 minutes to learn the mechanic and about 1h to be able to continously gain top speed and make my way around maps with few mistakes. It isn't complex by any means and requires minimal effort to learn.
fana - whilst you make some valid points and wild assertions as to be expected - look at the current generation of games that are successful in esports and how they have managed to design extremely high skill competitive games that still manage to be inclusive and intuitive. they prove that you dont need to have complex input mechanics in order to create depth or skill ceiling. granted they are a different genre but the skill resides in knowing when, where and how to use your abilities, not about how well you click 'jump'.
the biggest change arising from the bunnyhopping change in that imo, it fundamentally changes how the skulk approaches the problem of closing distance to marines. its also a much more ground based technique and i think that keeping the skulk more wall and ceiling focussed is more fun. furthermore, while i love strafe acceleration and have played games based on it for most of my life, lets not kid ourselves that in reality, it was an easy, fun and universal exploit that got out of control in the first proper internet multiplayer game. i think its possible to come up with something intentional thats equally fun, but also fits the context more.
If it was possible they would have figured something out by now. They have been trying to come up with a proper movement mechanic for as long as I can remember and each version of it has pretty much failed.
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.
It took me 10 minutes to learn the mechanic and about 1h to be able to continously gain top speed and make my way around maps with few mistakes. It isn't complex by any means and requires minimal effort to learn.
fighting is interesting yes, but so is movement.
i have a feeling you might have more than an hours practice in other forms of bunnyhopping? you dont see the injustice of retroactively forcing new muscle memory based movement mechanics with which you've had years and years of practice on a much larger group of players who havent, compounding your competitive advantage in the process?
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.
It took me 10 minutes to learn the mechanic and about 1h to be able to continously gain top speed and make my way around maps with few mistakes. It isn't complex by any means and requires minimal effort to learn.
fighting is interesting yes, but so is movement.
To you, perhaps, not to me. I have trouble with timing and fine motor control, which is why I prefer games which emphasise thought and planning and tactics. I can accept that aiming ability is necessarily a component of any FPS game but emphasis on movement is not necessarily a component of it, it is something that may or may not be included. NS2 includes a lot of it but it is not enough to ensure success, and I find this a good state of affairs, in the absence of movement mastery providing a major advantage, other areas of the game become important. If mastering movement can win you the game, it devalues the other areas of the game, like one unit being excessively powerful in an RTS does.
There is a lot of movement you need to be good at in NS2, but there is also a lot of other stuff you need to be good at as well, I don't see the need to build even more depth and reward into the movement side of the game and neglect the other areas.
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
That patently cannot be true, if you give skulks a powerful and effective new movement option which is difficult to use, then skulks have to be balanced around that. If a skulk can bunnyhop and receive a significant buff from it, then either skulks become overpowered when they use it, or they are underpowered without it.
Either the game would be spoiled for marines because of super skulks, or the game would be spoiled for skulks who don't bunnyhop because they suck without it.
Or, I suppose, bunnyhopping is not actually important and not really all that worth doing because it confers minimal actual benefit, in which case the whole argument pushing for its introduction is somewhat moot.
Again let me explain it this way, I'm just going to assume you casual but I know nothing about you
When you join a public server, you're going to be facing the same people, people who don't really get the mechanic, aka the same skulks you're facing now (because the base skulk itself hasn't really changed) when a person who joins your server and is higher skilled, they will lopside the team and dominate. When a person who joins your server in balance test and is high skilled, they will lopside the team and dominate. Basically with this new power, you won't be seeing any of it being used unless you're facing someone who was already better than you
It's the same thing as playing quake, you can enjoy a 1v1 in quake without intense speed gains and map control because you're facing someone at your own level, however put you against someone of a higher level, they will do proper movement, control the map, deny you powerups, use the timer, confine you to one part of the map with explosives etc etc. Meanwhile the casual player would just find you and shoot at you.. same applies to this game.. it caters to BOTH groups, not to ONE group.
A common mistake among the gaming industry at the moment is only catering towards the casual community, hence why so many games this past year and even the decade before have been nothing but absolute shit. If a game handicaps me to the point where my skills can't even be applied to the game, then why would I want to play that game? Why would I have all of this gaming hardware? Why would I have dedicated my time to learning game mechanics, game sense, muscle memory for aiming, and strategies? If all of it goes out the window just so "one" group of players can enjoy the game while completely phasing out the other group
So regardless of whatever mechanic is added, this player is still going to dominate. You won't be seeing every single person doing this or at the speeds you may have seen; as for "syknik" he most likely understands it from use in previous games, which probably was spent dozens of hours to learn it from there. Unless a better mechanic for the current skulk movement is applied; then this one is fine as is, the vanilla skulk feels awful and there is no denying that
I picked it up easy because of all my years playing counter-strike and figuring out it was much the same-at wallhopping-
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
That patently cannot be true, if you give skulks a powerful and effective new movement option which is difficult to use, then skulks have to be balanced around that. If a skulk can bunnyhop and receive a significant buff from it, then either skulks become overpowered when they use it, or they are underpowered without it.
Either the game would be spoiled for marines because of super skulks, or the game would be spoiled for skulks who don't bunnyhop because they suck without it.
Or, I suppose, bunnyhopping is not actually important and not really all that worth doing because it confers minimal actual benefit, in which case the whole argument pushing for its introduction is somewhat moot.
Again let me explain it this way, I'm just going to assume you casual but I know nothing about you
When you join a public server, you're going to be facing the same people, people who don't really get the mechanic, aka the same skulks you're facing now (because the base skulk itself hasn't really changed) when a person who joins your server and is higher skilled, they will lopside the team and dominate. When a person who joins your server in balance test and is high skilled, they will lopside the team and dominate. Basically with this new power, you won't be seeing any of it being used unless you're facing someone who was already better than you
And that's the point.
You are not going to be facing the same people, because a major cause of imbalance in any given match at the moment is the wild variation in skill between any given players. In any match you face up against people who are far, far differently progressed in their understanding of the game than you are.
Indeed, unskilled vs unskilled and skilled vs skilled may be unchanged, (arguably because x = x is always true regardless of the value of x) but you rarely, if ever, find that sort of matchup.
When you say skilled, what do you mean, do you mean good at skulking? Good at being a marine? good with what weapon or upgrade set? Good on what map, in what situation? At what time of the day? With what sort of commander and what sort of tech differential?
The one thing you can bank on on NS2 is NOT facing up against people who are equivalent to you in skill levels for your respective classes at that point.
So why, then, would you wish to exacerbate the problem?
Why is it a good thing that a few good players, in this supposedly team oriented game, can entirely invalidate every other player on the server and render their input moot, simply by playing classes which give you an excessive advantage for being good at their mechanics? Do you really want NS1 again? When one good fade can win the game for aliens, thus making everyone else on both teams entirely useless? Why would you give the alien team the ability to be stupidly effective with their base class if you happen to have mastered its movement gimmick?
What is the point in commanding and weapon loadouts and group cooperation and communication and tactics and resource gathering if you are saying the game should simply be about grabbing the skulk and bunnyhopping your way to victory?
Unless you find yourself consistently in the position of being the person the game revolves around, or unless you happen to have a peculiar complex which gives you pleasure every time your are marginalised, why would you think that's a good state of affairs?
I for one hope the balance mod stays just that, a mod.
I gave it a try. Not a fan of ice-skating.
That said, I think it's worthy of serious consideration that sweeping game-wide changes at this point will alienate much of the new to semi-new audience. The game's already got a steep learning curve, you go in and assassinate movement mechanics and demand an all new set of learning challenges, you're going to lose players.
It isn't a matter of "It isn't better". I could be persuaded to think that the balance mod has a lot of good changes, but these good changes and sweeping design differences aren't going to bring in a new audience, but they WILL 100% scare away some players; the number can be argued, whether 2%, 10%, or 30% of the playerbase, but anything that has zero guaranteed gain or attraction to a wider scope, and 100% guaranteed loss, should be very carefully thought about before implementing.
What annoys me more than the breed of idiot gamer wanting everything on a platter is that they choose to spout their putrid views and uninformed crap here of all places. A huge part of what made NS successful was its commitment to - and prioritization of - interesting gameplay above all else. It was one of the few places where an unintuitive mechanic was promoted because, DAMN, it was good and not worth removing just to cater to some casual nublets.
There are so many other games these casual donkies can get their easy-mode hard-on. Why smear their gaming poop all over one of the only homes the intelligent and creative fps player with a penchant for strategy has to get their fix?
I for one hope the balance mod stays just that, a mod.
I gave it a try. Not a fan of ice-skating.
That said, I think it's worthy of serious consideration that sweeping game-wide changes at this point will alienate much of the new to semi-new audience. The game's already got a steep learning curve, you go in and assassinate movement mechanics and demand an all new set of learning challenges, you're going to lose players.
It isn't a matter of "It isn't better". I could be persuaded to think that the balance mod has a lot of good changes, but these good changes and sweeping design differences aren't going to bring in a new audience, but they WILL 100% scare away some players; the number can be argued, whether 2%, 10%, or 30% of the playerbase, but anything that has zero guaranteed gain or attraction to a wider scope, and 100% guaranteed loss, should be very carefully thought about before implementing.
Two cents.
-Colt
i think the way UWE plans to do it is to run concurrent game promotions with the release of this mod - whether the new sales will offset the departing players remains to be seen - considering how they've been in the past, its sad to see them so nakedly gamble their existing player base to generate some more sales
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.
Can't stress this enough. Been working through SC2:HotS and finding that it is plagued with this issue. Set the difficulty to Brutal and proceeded to breeze through the missions. I'm a long-time RTS player (since WC1), but my APM is atrocious, my macro is horrible, and my zerg strat is to mass zerglings, roaches, and hydras till I win.
Contrast this with XCOM:EU in which I struggled on even normal difficulty. I can't make it past the 2nd month on Ironman Impossible. Ironically, it is also the game with the 3rd most played hours for me on Steam (after NS2 and ND). I don't think I'm out of the ordinary in that the point of a video game is to provide a challenge rather than be an interactive movie.
You are not going to be facing the same people, because a major cause of imbalance in any given match at the moment is the wild variation in skill between any given players. In any match you face up against people who are far, far differently progressed in their understanding of the game than you are.
Indeed, unskilled vs unskilled and skilled vs skilled may be unchanged, (arguably because x = x is always true regardless of the value of x) but you rarely, if ever, find that sort of matchup.
When you say skilled, what do you mean, do you mean good at skulking? Good at being a marine? good with what weapon or upgrade set? Good on what map, in what situation? At what time of the day? With what sort of commander and what sort of tech differential?
The one thing you can bank on on NS2 is NOT facing up against people who are equivalent to you in skill levels for your respective classes at that point.
So why, then, would you wish to exacerbate the problem?
Why is it a good thing that a few good players, in this supposedly team oriented game, can entirely invalidate every other player on the server and render their input moot, simply by playing classes which give you an excessive advantage for being good at their mechanics? Do you really want NS1 again? When one good fade can win the game for aliens, thus making everyone else on both teams entirely useless? Why would you give the alien team the ability to be stupidly effective with their base class if you happen to have mastered its movement gimmick?
What is the point in commanding and weapon loadouts and group cooperation and communication and tactics and resource gathering if you are saying the game should simply be about grabbing the skulk and bunnyhopping your way to victory?
Unless you find yourself consistently in the position of being the person the game revolves around, or unless you happen to have a peculiar complex which gives you pleasure every time your are marginalised, why would you think that's a good state of affairs?
I actually understand your point and think this is one of the major failings of NS2 right now. However, I think the best solution is some form of skill-differentiated sorting, such as skill-based matchmaking or server browser skill sorting. I have proposed several variations of the idea with the purpose of minimizing the skill differential between players in as many games as possible. Regularly pitting Bronze vs Platinum-level players in public match is, has always been, and will be in the future a terrible idea.
1. It's funny the amount of people that write off the entire balance mod because they don't like 1 single change out of 200+
2. It's funny the amount of people that write off the new movement system as soon as they hear the word bhop.*Snip*
3. It's funny the people saying shit about the balance mod when they obviously have not played it AT ALL and are making theorycraft opinions *Snip*
4. NS1 had the following cycle: 1.04 -> 2.0/2.1 -> 3.0/3.1/3.2. All three stages introduced massive changes to the game and had a boost in popularity and player numbers. If your justification that you don't like balance mod is its to drastic and it will loose player numbers then you are just plain wrong. History is against you as proven over 7 years of NS1.
*Snip*
Are you aware of how many players that might try the game again due to the frustrating experienced due to no skilled movement system, complete bland alien tech tree and lack of balance? I know quite alot and this mod has gathered the interest of a few oldschool NS1 players I know. NS2 is in current state is bleeding players daily, the game needs a bomb set under it and massive changes otherwise it will slowly sink into obvlivion.
Think of this as moving from 1.04 -> 2.0. Although I doubt that even means anything to you as you're obviously a *Snip*
*If you can't post without that much name calling and aggression towards others, do not post. -Ironhorse*
Can we please stop labeling people that want skill-based movement systems to be ACCESSIBLE as "casual noob that want to get their easy-mode-hardon"? It not only makes you sound like an elitist idiot, it also shows you dont read (or don't understand) the posts of those players.
"embracing interesting mechanics" is not mutually exclusive with bein accessible.
A mechanice being easy to understand is not mutually exclusive with a high skill-ceiling.
Reading through this and other discussions apparently a lot of people that are in favour of "bunnyhopping" put the emphasis on the wrong aspect of skill-based movement systems. Too often "putting in the effort to learn the mechanic" is confused with "willingness to search for ressources outside the game to learn about the mechanic in the first place". NS2 does a horrible job at explaining a lot of its mechanics. A lot of people completely underestimate the huge advantage in knowledge they have if they are playing since the beta, etc. A game explaining its mechanics if not "serving entitled cod-noobs stuff on a silver platter", it's good game design.
I am not opposed to a skill-based movement mechanic, I actually WELCOME it. I am against the elitist notion of "obsure" mechanics. The knowledge that it exists and how it works should be easily accessible in the game for everyone. After learning about the mechanic in game I should not have to wonder how some other player pulled off that sick movement, but I should be able to apprechiate his use of it and aspire to use it as good as her. The emphasis here is on USING the mechanic.
We can appreciate a race driver, to give an example, for accelerating and breaking at the right time for exactly the right duration, steer just right and drift around a corner perfectly. All those mechanics are easily understood by people. Push the gas/breaks results in acceleration/deceleration. Turning the wheel changes direction. Add in simple information about how a handbreake works and what friction is, and - voila - the theory of drifting is NOT OBSCURE SAGE KNOWLEDGE. Go to any of those "drive safety" courses. People can pull off a drift EASILY. They are however not able to drift around corners perfectly like a race driver.
Want another videogame related example? Take skiing in the Tribes series (actually started as a gameplay bug that was embrased by the players and became icony to the series). Using your jetpack to control height is a concept that is very easy to grasp. Holding down a button to glide down a slope is a concept that is easy to graps, too. Chaining those two together is logical and thus EASILY ACCESSIBLE. Does it meann it is not skill-based? No it doesn't. Reading the terrain, finding "routes", improvising new routes on the fly, adjust for small errors you might make, etc. all factors in. All these things are easily understandable, the are based on our common everyday knowledge about how physics work.
A skill-based movement system that is obscure, hard to graps, grounded on the notion of "complicated = skillful" is a bad thing. QWOP-Jumping... bleh.
If you are going to snip my posts Ironhorse, atleast leave my points in there and snip out the name calling...
Maybe next time talk to others on the forums the way you want to be addressed yourself?
We're not here to clean up the mess you create... So if you don't want your posts decimated by snips like that, post in a more civilized manner...
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
edited May 2013
What if male_fatalities has no problem with being addressed in the way in which he addresses others? how does that work
Not sure I understand this obsession with casual players and the holy "new player" that some people have on this forum, as if it were some sort of odd religion where we get to prove how pious we are the more we mention "new player" in our posts. Next minute the church of new player will be selling indulgences and having confessionals for the sin of not saying 3 hail Mary's every time you mention the word bhop.
New players and casuals who find it all so hard and confusing really don't have as much value as people think, as they are unlikely to become comp players (aka the spawn of Lucifer) due to being too stupid and lacking initiative, while also having already paid their money (so who gives a poo poo anyway). Not worth wasting UWE resources on the infinite ways in which we can explain and make intuitive and make accessible and make friendly every potentially challenging mechanic. That's the difference between the new gamer and old gamer; the latter took initiative and was generally more intelligent while the former is a left side of bell curve knuckle dragger who like that long haired stoner idiot kid in that viral video (where he bitches about education not being engaging) needs to be spoon fed everything.
I for one enjoy a new game where I don't know how to do anything and it takes me time to discover all the neat tricks. When you tell people how to do everything straight up you take away the fun of learning and further perpetuates stupidity.
What if male_fatalities has no problem with being addressed in the way in which he addresses others? how does that work
Not sure I understand this obsession with casual players and the holy "new player" that some people have on this forum, as if it were some sort of odd religion where we get to prove how pious we are the more we mention "new player" in our posts. Next minute the church of new player will be selling indulgences and having confessionals for the sin of not saying 3 hail Mary's every time you mention the word bhop.
New players and casuals who find it all so hard and confusing really don't have as much value as people think, as they are unlikely to become comp players (aka the spawn of Lucifer) due to being too stupid and lacking initiative, while also having already paid their money (so who gives a poo poo anyway). Not worth wasting UWE resources on the infinite ways in which we can explain and make intuitive and make accessible and make friendly every potentially challenging mechanic. That's the difference between the new gamer and old gamer; the latter took initiative and was generally more intelligent while the former is a left side of bell curve knuckle dragger who like that long haired stoner idiot kid in that viral video (where he bitches about education not being engaging) needs to be spoon fed everything.
I for one enjoy a new game where I don't know how to do anything and it takes me time to discover all the neat tricks. When you tell people how to do everything straight up you take away the fun of learning and further perpetuates stupidity.
You can have easy mechanics with a challenging game.
I like dark souls, it gives you a dodge, a block, and a button to hit stuff with, your choices determine how well you block, how you hit stuff, and how fast you can dodge. It puts you up against a variety of enemies which hit you in a variety of ways, and require their own combinations of dodging, blocking, and hitting in order to beat them. You have buttons to move in directions, buttons to hit stuff, and a button to stop stuff hitting you, there's no need for anything even remotely resembling a bunnyhop style series of button presses and I'd say even skulk walljumping is less comprehensible and less engaging than almost all of the dark souls combat mechanics.
The game remains pleasantly challenging, interesting, and enjoyable. If you mess up, it kills you, though happily it doesn't smack you down very hard, it just makes you do the area again until you get it right. If you want to wager more than just a bit of ingame xp/cash on your success, you can do that, but you don't have to. The game rewards patience and not falling for easy traps, it rewards studying your enemy and learning how to beat them, and it rewards experimentation with lots of different equipment combinations to find the one best suited for you, and for your enemies.
The game is not, arguably, very difficult, because anyone with half a brain and some understanding of how to use a gamepad can beat it, given time. But it is challenging, engaging, interesting, and entertaining.
It's a good example of a game that doesn't need a tutorial, because it's so simple, but which does expect a good performance from you, and won't simply hand you the next area on a plate. The game tells you exactly how you to do everything you need to do to beat it, the rest is simply getting good at doing those things. It's a lot like the action-rpg equivalent of super mario really, you don't need to be told how to play it, really, and a lot of the joy in it is experiencing it for yourself, but the few mechanics it has, it uses well, and gets an awful lot of mileage out of.
Simple mechanics are not boring mechanics, it is almost always better to do more with existing mechanics than trying to pile more on for the sake of it.
fanaticThis post has been edited.Join Date: 2003-07-23Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited May 2013
Dark Souls also happens to be, at least primarily, a singleplayer game where you fight against AI controlled enemies that do not use ranged hitscan weapons. The difference is that in NS2, which is a ranged vs. melee multiplayer game, you are for the most part pitting two mechanics against each other; aim vs. movement. In such a game (NS2), the movement mechanic needs, for both balance and entertainment purposes, to be as deep as the aim mechanic. This is a gross oversimplification, but hopefully it gets the point across.
Nobody is arguing that the mechanics themselves (in this case bunnyhopping) need to be unintuitive and convoluted to be good. That would be ridiculous. That is also why the argument for bunnyhopping in ns2 is based on three substantial claims: (1) There is currently no other movement mechanic with sufficient depth that can be applied to ns2, nor is there likely to be invented one given that the collective games industry have not been able to produce one over the past 20 years or so, (2) The advantages of bunnyhopping are so great that even when considering the disadvantages, it is still a net positive addition to the game, and (3) It is possible to negate most, if not all, of the disadvantages of bunnyhopping through redesigning the mechanic for ns2.
I've yet to see anyone be able to refute a single one of these claims, let alone all of them considered together, throughout the way-too-many-years bunnyhopping has been discussed on these forums.
Superedit: Tribes skiing is a good example of a very different mechanic that has a great deal of depth, that works well in a game that is completely different from ns2. It is, however, not intuitive, nor is it easy to learn, as a poster claimed earlier in this thread (as evidenced by the myriad of hour long tutorials on youtube if anyone is skeptical). It is also interesting to note that skiing was not intended design, it was a result of unintended consequences from the game engine physics, just like bunnyhopping.
Want another videogame related example? Take skiing in the Tribes series (actually started as a gameplay bug that was embrased by the players and became icony to the series). Using your jetpack to control height is a concept that is very easy to grasp. Holding down a button to glide down a slope is a concept that is easy to graps, too. Chaining those two together is logical and thus EASILY ACCESSIBLE. Does it meann it is not skill-based? No it doesn't. Reading the terrain, finding "routes", improvising new routes on the fly, adjust for small errors you might make, etc. all factors in. All these things are easily understandable, the are based on our common everyday knowledge about how physics work.
Actually, its not because jetpacking and sliding are not two things you'd put together. However, its so well known in Tribes that its become common knowledge even though its a bit illogical.
Dark Souls also happens to be, at least primarily, a singleplayer game where you fight against AI controlled enemies that do not use ranged hitscan weapons. The difference is that in NS2, which is a ranged vs. melee multiplayer game, you are for the most part pitting two mechanics against each other; aim vs. movement. In such a game (NS2), the movement mechanic needs, for both balance and entertainment purposes, to be as deep as the aim mechanic. This is a gross oversimplification, but hopefully it gets the point across.
Nobody is arguing that the mechanics themselves (in this case bunnyhopping) need to be unintuitive and convoluted to be good. That would be ridiculous. That is also why the argument for bunnyhopping in ns2 is based on three substantial claims: (1) There is currently no other movement mechanic with sufficient depth that can be applied to ns2, nor is there likely to be invented one given that the collective games industry have not been able to produce one over the past 20 years or so, (2) The advantages of bunnyhopping are so great that even when considering the disadvantages, it is still a net positive addition to the game, and (3) It is possible to negate most, if not all, of the disadvantages of bunnyhopping through redesigning the mechanic for ns2.
I've yet to see anyone be able to refute a single one of these claims, let alone all of them considered together, throughout the way-too-many-years bunnyhopping has been discussed on these forums.
Superedit: Tribes skiing is a good example of a very different mechanic that has a great deal of depth, that works well in a game that is completely different from this. It is, however, not intuitive, nor is it easy to learn, as a poster claimed earlier in this thread (as evidenced by the myriad of hour long tutorials on youtube if anyone is skeptical). It is also interesting to note that skiing was not intended design, it was a result of unintended consequences from the game engine physics, just like bunnyhopping.
Well I'd probably counter by saying that as far as I'm concerned, 1. I don't really think that bunnyhopping is a particularly deep mechanic in and of itself, it's just a timing puzzle added to the sprint key, all the other depth is a product of movement in combat, which you would have with any movement system.
2. I subsequently am not really aware of any advantages, really, to bunnyhopping being in the game.
3. While I'm sure you could rework it to be easy to use, as I said, the only thing it does that I'm aware of is add a timing puzzle that makes you move faster, if you make the timing puzzle easy to do, it begs the question of why it's there in the first place.
Bunnyhopping kind of is something that is only 'good' if it is complicated and non-transparent, because that's the only thing that makes it a thing. Otherwise it's like... It's a little bit like putting in a 'mash the button really fast' sequence into the mechanics for opening doors. It wouldn't add anything other than just being kind of pointless, just make it so you press the use key to open the door, or make the door open itself when you get near it. It's fine to have unlocking minigames to open some doors, but not a really banal and easy thing you just have to do all the time.
The tribes example I don't really agree with either, I played a little bit of some tribes game once, I had a jetpack which handled like you would expect a jetpack to, hold jump to go higher, and you slid around I think by holding a key? It wasn't complicated or unintuitive, you press the slide key and you slide, going downhill makes you go faster, going off a jump makes you fly into the air. It's intuitive because anyone who's ever rolled a ball down a hill knows how the momentum works. Or even driven a car in a videogame, because driving games of course make you go faster downhill and make you jump when you hit a ramp. It draws from a lot of other existing ideas which are well understood by almost anyone I'd think. The depth comes from extrapolation of that mechanic. It's basically like a driving game if your car had jumpjets really, that's what I took from it anyway. It doesn't rely on any complex controls and there's a lot you can do with the terrain. Honestly you could probably add sliding like that to the gorge and it'd be kinda cool in NS2. Press slide button, commence sliding. It's about as simple as press sprint to go faster, just with other stuff you can do too.
the mechanics of aiming are actually extremely simple though - you point and you click. its also extremely intuitive - you point and you click. it would follow that the ultimate movement system should be similarly simple in its mechanics and intuitive.
i think the tribes example works well - the movement is easy to learn, hard to master. you click to go up, hold to slide. it works the same for everyone and the way it works is immediately apparent.
fana, as for your claims - ofcourse no one is able to refute them in your eyes as they rely on your subjective valuations of what is worthwhile or desirable in the game - ie your opinion. you are entitled to it ofcourse - but you shouldn't imply that those you disagree are irrational - this is not mathematics, its game design.
the mechanics of aiming are actually extremely simple though - you point and you click. its also extremely intuitive - you point and you click. it would follow that the ultimate movement system should be similarly simple in its mechanics and intuitive.
i think the tribes example works well - the movement is easy to learn, hard to master. you click to go up, hold to slide. it works the same for everyone and the way it works is immediately apparent.
fana, as for your claims - ofcourse no one is able to refute them in your eyes as they rely on your subjective valuations of what is worthwhile or desirable in the game - ie your opinion. you are entitled to it ofcourse - but you shouldn't imply that those you disagree are irrational - this is not mathematics, its game design.
That too, actually, aiming is extremely simple in NS2, as you say you point and click, movement would therefore have to be press and go. Bunnyhopping and most of the proposed movement mechanics in general, actually, are far more complicated than the point and click approach. That's actually my current complaint with the skulk. Marines point and click on stuff to kill it, skulks have to do that in melee while moving and dodging in order to even get close.
Skulks are already much more involved than marines are, which is why they're kinda crap as far as I'm concerned, they may be good in skilled hands but they're harder to use, which is in itself a weakness, especially given the massive disparity in player ability on most teams in most games.
Well I'd probably counter by saying that as far as I'm concerned, 1. I don't really think that bunnyhopping is a particularly deep mechanic in and of itself, it's just a timing puzzle added to the sprint key, all the other depth is a product of movement in combat, which you would have with any movement system.
2. I subsequently am not really aware of any advantages, really, to bunnyhopping being in the game.
You've participated in more than enough of these debates to have seen this link before, and I know that you are at least literate enough to read it, so that is a load of rubbish. You can of course argue against the quality of said advantages, but you can't deny that they're there, nor that they have significant depth compared to current movement mechanics.
3. While I'm sure you could rework it to be easy to use, as I said, the only thing it does that I'm aware of is add a timing puzzle that makes you move faster, if you make the timing puzzle easy to do, it begs the question of why it's there in the first place.
This is something you've repeated during bunnyhop discussions for years on these forums, yet all it does is prove that you don't understand how bunnyhopping actually works. The timing element has been a necessary part of bunnyhopping in the past, but it is not what makes it interesting or deep, which is why the timing element has been removed from the pseudo bunnyhop in the current balance mod.
Bunnyhopping kind of is something that is only 'good' if it is complicated and non-transparent, because that's the only thing that makes it a thing. Otherwise it's like... It's a little bit like putting in a 'mash the button really fast' sequence into the mechanics for opening doors. It wouldn't add anything other than just being kind of pointless, just make it so you press the use key to open the door, or make the door open itself when you get near it. It's fine to have unlocking minigames to open some doors, but not a really banal and easy thing you just have to do all the time.
No, it really isn't. All this statement does, as I said above, is prove that you don't understand how bunnyhopping works (which is kind of amazing considering how many of these debates you have participated in by now). The pseudo bunnyhop in the balance mod currently does away with all the key combinations previously associated with bunnyhopping. All you have to do to use it is to release and hold jump between each jump (a "queued jump" system, ie. no timing required) to gain speed. It still has most of the depth associated with previous vesions of bunnyhopping.
The tribes example I don't really agree with either, I played a little bit of some tribes game once, I had a jetpack which handled like you would expect a jetpack to, hold jump to go higher, and you slid around I think by holding a key? It wasn't complicated or unintuitive, you press the slide key and you slide, going downhill makes you go faster, going off a jump makes you fly into the air. It's intuitive because anyone who's ever rolled a ball down a hill knows how the momentum works. Or even driven a car in a videogame, because driving games of course make you go faster downhill and make you jump when you hit a ramp. It draws from a lot of other existing ideas which are well understood by almost anyone I'd think. The depth comes from extrapolation of that mechanic. It's basically like a driving game if your car had jumpjets really, that's what I took from it anyway. It doesn't rely on any complex controls and there's a lot you can do with the terrain. Honestly you could probably add sliding like that to the gorge and it'd be kinda cool in NS2. Press slide button, commence sliding. It's about as simple as press sprint to go faster, just with other stuff you can do too.
If I wanted to I could describe even classic quake bunnyhopping in terms that would make it seem equally intuitive; it still doesn't make it so in reality. If tribes skiing is intuitive, so is bunnyhopping, even more so the current ns2 balance mod pseudo bunnyhop.
the mechanics of aiming are actually extremely simple though - you point and you click. its also extremely intuitive - you point and you click. it would follow that the ultimate movement system should be similarly simple in its mechanics and intuitive.
Ideally, this is the case, but in practice it is very difficult to accomplish. The current balance mod pseudo bunnyhop is pretty much there, though. You'd have to have some sort of physical or mental disability to not be able to learn and use it easily.
fana, as for your claims - ofcourse no one is able to refute them in your eyes as they rely on your subjective valuations of what is worthwhile or desirable in the game - ie your opinion. you are entitled to it ofcourse - but you shouldn't imply that those you disagree are irrational - this is not mathematics, its game design.
Arguing that a game should not have depth is irrational. As for the particular merits of the claims themselves, those are very much open to argumentation. For example, one could argue that it is not possible to make bunnyhopping more intuitive (as Christ0132 attempted to above), but one would be incorrect. Just because you don't like the conclusion, doesn't mean you can define it as "subjective" and pretend it doesn't matter.
Skulks are already much more involved than marines are, which is why they're kinda crap as far as I'm concerned, they may be good in skilled hands but they're harder to use, which is in itself a weakness, especially given the massive disparity in player ability on most teams in most games.
It is true that the melee alien lifeforms are generally harder to play than marines for rookie players, but not because they are "harder to use". It is simply because while most players have a significant amount of experience shooting things from previous games, almost none will have any experience playing a melee class against opponents using ranged weapons. There is no way to fix that other than redesigning the melee classes to be like the most recent AVP incarnation, in which case you may as well just delete the entire game from the Internet because it will not be worth playing by anyone.
Conversely, the skill curve for melee aliens tops out much earlier than that for aiming as marines. A movement system with depth, like bunnyhopping, extends the melee alien skill curve slightly to alleviate that problem.
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
That patently cannot be true, if you give skulks a powerful and effective new movement option which is difficult to use, then skulks have to be balanced around that. If a skulk can bunnyhop and receive a significant buff from it, then either skulks become overpowered when they use it, or they are underpowered without it.
Either the game would be spoiled for marines because of super skulks, or the game would be spoiled for skulks who don't bunnyhop because they suck without it.
Or, I suppose, bunnyhopping is not actually important and not really all that worth doing because it confers minimal actual benefit, in which case the whole argument pushing for its introduction is somewhat moot.
Again let me explain it this way, I'm just going to assume you casual but I know nothing about you
When you join a public server, you're going to be facing the same people, people who don't really get the mechanic, aka the same skulks you're facing now (because the base skulk itself hasn't really changed) when a person who joins your server and is higher skilled, they will lopside the team and dominate. When a person who joins your server in balance test and is high skilled, they will lopside the team and dominate. Basically with this new power, you won't be seeing any of it being used unless you're facing someone who was already better than you
And that's the point.
You are not going to be facing the same people, because a major cause of imbalance in any given match at the moment is the wild variation in skill between any given players. In any match you face up against people who are far, far differently progressed in their understanding of the game than you are.
Indeed, unskilled vs unskilled and skilled vs skilled may be unchanged, (arguably because x = x is always true regardless of the value of x) but you rarely, if ever, find that sort of matchup.
When you say skilled, what do you mean, do you mean good at skulking? Good at being a marine? good with what weapon or upgrade set? Good on what map, in what situation? At what time of the day? With what sort of commander and what sort of tech differential?
The one thing you can bank on on NS2 is NOT facing up against people who are equivalent to you in skill levels for your respective classes at that point.
So why, then, would you wish to exacerbate the problem?
Why is it a good thing that a few good players, in this supposedly team oriented game, can entirely invalidate every other player on the server and render their input moot, simply by playing classes which give you an excessive advantage for being good at their mechanics? Do you really want NS1 again? When one good fade can win the game for aliens, thus making everyone else on both teams entirely useless? Why would you give the alien team the ability to be stupidly effective with their base class if you happen to have mastered its movement gimmick?
What is the point in commanding and weapon loadouts and group cooperation and communication and tactics and resource gathering if you are saying the game should simply be about grabbing the skulk and bunnyhopping your way to victory?
Unless you find yourself consistently in the position of being the person the game revolves around, or unless you happen to have a peculiar complex which gives you pleasure every time your are marginalised, why would you think that's a good state of affairs?
A skilled fade can already win the entire match for aliens, heck a single lerk can do it if they're good enough
I understand your point, but removing something just because a part of the playerbase will have trouble learning it/fighting it is not a good idea, and you don't find yourself facing similar skilled people as it is right now, this would be solved by a form of pug/matching system; that's a major problem the game has right now
It's the same problem that exist in, counter-strike 1.6 or source for example, you sign in and there's a bunch of servers, but nothing to play (for the competitive based player) we see 24 slot, deathmatch combat whatever and just don't want any of it; so what do we do? exit the game? or join a rookie server and just endlessly slaughter an entire team.. of course the solution for NA counter-strike is to get ESEA and do pugs, which also don't really work because anyone can join the pug and the skill system they match you on promotes individuality instead of teamwork, heck stats are so important it can determine if a team even gives you a try out (wrong, you can't determine someones skill from pugs played with random players)
So what I'm saying is, matchmaking
Of course the playerbase we have isn't huge, but it can work; if after a few wins it marks you in a "higher" bracket and you can then face competitive players in a 6v6 environment, I'd be thrilled. Just look at how well it worked in halo 2 (yeah console, whatever) as soon as you got to the higher levels games were being decided constantly by ONE point, they were intense, and everyone was competing to their best to attempt to rank up (ultimately later ruined by massive amounts of cheating) and the rank system was simple, win matches rank up, unlike the latter versions of the series which moved to trueskill and ended up being horribly abused and causing "rank" locks meaning you could win dozens of times and never move in rank, so people would smurf to max rank causing the lower brackets of matchmaking to get destroyed by people who were of high level --anyway going super off topic here--
So, the new movement shouldn't be removed, if anything replaced by an alternative (but what else works?) and some type of pug system should be put into place and all your problems would essentially be gone. Leave the server browser to regular community servers and games, and turn all the official servers into matching servers (no offense but they aren't really currently being used)
i dont think the current version is anywhere close to being intuitive at all. no strafeaccel system ever can be and this has always been one of its drawbacks - are we really arguing about that now?
i never argued against depth so im not sure why you imply i do? what i mean about your claims being subjective is that you are looking at things from a certain angle, with your own ideas and ideology but the simple fact is that there is no ultimate right or wrong in these things. but by claiming people who hold differing opinions to yours as being irrational, you are trying to shut down the conversation because its not going entirely your way and thats not cool.
Comments
That patently cannot be true, if you give skulks a powerful and effective new movement option which is difficult to use, then skulks have to be balanced around that. If a skulk can bunnyhop and receive a significant buff from it, then either skulks become overpowered when they use it, or they are underpowered without it.
Either the game would be spoiled for marines because of super skulks, or the game would be spoiled for skulks who don't bunnyhop because they suck without it.
Or, I suppose, bunnyhopping is not actually important and not really all that worth doing because it confers minimal actual benefit, in which case the whole argument pushing for its introduction is somewhat moot.
And balancing a game around competitive is one important part for sure, but not the only one.
It took me 10 minutes to learn the mechanic and about 1h to be able to continously gain top speed and make my way around maps with few mistakes. It isn't complex by any means and requires minimal effort to learn.
fighting is interesting yes, but so is movement.
the biggest change arising from the bunnyhopping change in that imo, it fundamentally changes how the skulk approaches the problem of closing distance to marines. its also a much more ground based technique and i think that keeping the skulk more wall and ceiling focussed is more fun. furthermore, while i love strafe acceleration and have played games based on it for most of my life, lets not kid ourselves that in reality, it was an easy, fun and universal exploit that got out of control in the first proper internet multiplayer game. i think its possible to come up with something intentional thats equally fun, but also fits the context more.
i have a feeling you might have more than an hours practice in other forms of bunnyhopping? you dont see the injustice of retroactively forcing new muscle memory based movement mechanics with which you've had years and years of practice on a much larger group of players who havent, compounding your competitive advantage in the process?
To you, perhaps, not to me. I have trouble with timing and fine motor control, which is why I prefer games which emphasise thought and planning and tactics. I can accept that aiming ability is necessarily a component of any FPS game but emphasis on movement is not necessarily a component of it, it is something that may or may not be included. NS2 includes a lot of it but it is not enough to ensure success, and I find this a good state of affairs, in the absence of movement mastery providing a major advantage, other areas of the game become important. If mastering movement can win you the game, it devalues the other areas of the game, like one unit being excessively powerful in an RTS does.
There is a lot of movement you need to be good at in NS2, but there is also a lot of other stuff you need to be good at as well, I don't see the need to build even more depth and reward into the movement side of the game and neglect the other areas.
Again let me explain it this way, I'm just going to assume you casual but I know nothing about you
When you join a public server, you're going to be facing the same people, people who don't really get the mechanic, aka the same skulks you're facing now (because the base skulk itself hasn't really changed) when a person who joins your server and is higher skilled, they will lopside the team and dominate. When a person who joins your server in balance test and is high skilled, they will lopside the team and dominate. Basically with this new power, you won't be seeing any of it being used unless you're facing someone who was already better than you
It's the same thing as playing quake, you can enjoy a 1v1 in quake without intense speed gains and map control because you're facing someone at your own level, however put you against someone of a higher level, they will do proper movement, control the map, deny you powerups, use the timer, confine you to one part of the map with explosives etc etc. Meanwhile the casual player would just find you and shoot at you.. same applies to this game.. it caters to BOTH groups, not to ONE group.
A common mistake among the gaming industry at the moment is only catering towards the casual community, hence why so many games this past year and even the decade before have been nothing but absolute shit. If a game handicaps me to the point where my skills can't even be applied to the game, then why would I want to play that game? Why would I have all of this gaming hardware? Why would I have dedicated my time to learning game mechanics, game sense, muscle memory for aiming, and strategies? If all of it goes out the window just so "one" group of players can enjoy the game while completely phasing out the other group
So regardless of whatever mechanic is added, this player is still going to dominate. You won't be seeing every single person doing this or at the speeds you may have seen; as for "syknik" he most likely understands it from use in previous games, which probably was spent dozens of hours to learn it from there. Unless a better mechanic for the current skulk movement is applied; then this one is fine as is, the vanilla skulk feels awful and there is no denying that
I picked it up easy because of all my years playing counter-strike and figuring out it was much the same-at wallhopping-
Then there is no issue with glancing being removed, since you're landing perfect bites anyway. It would never be an accidental bite.
And that's the point.
You are not going to be facing the same people, because a major cause of imbalance in any given match at the moment is the wild variation in skill between any given players. In any match you face up against people who are far, far differently progressed in their understanding of the game than you are.
Indeed, unskilled vs unskilled and skilled vs skilled may be unchanged, (arguably because x = x is always true regardless of the value of x) but you rarely, if ever, find that sort of matchup.
When you say skilled, what do you mean, do you mean good at skulking? Good at being a marine? good with what weapon or upgrade set? Good on what map, in what situation? At what time of the day? With what sort of commander and what sort of tech differential?
The one thing you can bank on on NS2 is NOT facing up against people who are equivalent to you in skill levels for your respective classes at that point.
So why, then, would you wish to exacerbate the problem?
Why is it a good thing that a few good players, in this supposedly team oriented game, can entirely invalidate every other player on the server and render their input moot, simply by playing classes which give you an excessive advantage for being good at their mechanics? Do you really want NS1 again? When one good fade can win the game for aliens, thus making everyone else on both teams entirely useless? Why would you give the alien team the ability to be stupidly effective with their base class if you happen to have mastered its movement gimmick?
What is the point in commanding and weapon loadouts and group cooperation and communication and tactics and resource gathering if you are saying the game should simply be about grabbing the skulk and bunnyhopping your way to victory?
Unless you find yourself consistently in the position of being the person the game revolves around, or unless you happen to have a peculiar complex which gives you pleasure every time your are marginalised, why would you think that's a good state of affairs?
I gave it a try. Not a fan of ice-skating.
That said, I think it's worthy of serious consideration that sweeping game-wide changes at this point will alienate much of the new to semi-new audience. The game's already got a steep learning curve, you go in and assassinate movement mechanics and demand an all new set of learning challenges, you're going to lose players.
It isn't a matter of "It isn't better". I could be persuaded to think that the balance mod has a lot of good changes, but these good changes and sweeping design differences aren't going to bring in a new audience, but they WILL 100% scare away some players; the number can be argued, whether 2%, 10%, or 30% of the playerbase, but anything that has zero guaranteed gain or attraction to a wider scope, and 100% guaranteed loss, should be very carefully thought about before implementing.
Two cents.
-Colt
There are so many other games these casual donkies can get their easy-mode hard-on. Why smear their gaming poop all over one of the only homes the intelligent and creative fps player with a penchant for strategy has to get their fix?
i think the way UWE plans to do it is to run concurrent game promotions with the release of this mod - whether the new sales will offset the departing players remains to be seen - considering how they've been in the past, its sad to see them so nakedly gamble their existing player base to generate some more sales
Contrast this with XCOM:EU in which I struggled on even normal difficulty. I can't make it past the 2nd month on Ironman Impossible. Ironically, it is also the game with the 3rd most played hours for me on Steam (after NS2 and ND). I don't think I'm out of the ordinary in that the point of a video game is to provide a challenge rather than be an interactive movie.
I actually understand your point and think this is one of the major failings of NS2 right now. However, I think the best solution is some form of skill-differentiated sorting, such as skill-based matchmaking or server browser skill sorting. I have proposed several variations of the idea with the purpose of minimizing the skill differential between players in as many games as possible. Regularly pitting Bronze vs Platinum-level players in public match is, has always been, and will be in the future a terrible idea.
1. It's funny the amount of people that write off the entire balance mod because they don't like 1 single change out of 200+
2. It's funny the amount of people that write off the new movement system as soon as they hear the word bhop.*Snip*
3. It's funny the people saying shit about the balance mod when they obviously have not played it AT ALL and are making theorycraft opinions *Snip*
4. NS1 had the following cycle: 1.04 -> 2.0/2.1 -> 3.0/3.1/3.2. All three stages introduced massive changes to the game and had a boost in popularity and player numbers. If your justification that you don't like balance mod is its to drastic and it will loose player numbers then you are just plain wrong. History is against you as proven over 7 years of NS1.
*Snip*
Are you aware of how many players that might try the game again due to the frustrating experienced due to no skilled movement system, complete bland alien tech tree and lack of balance? I know quite alot and this mod has gathered the interest of a few oldschool NS1 players I know. NS2 is in current state is bleeding players daily, the game needs a bomb set under it and massive changes otherwise it will slowly sink into obvlivion.
Think of this as moving from 1.04 -> 2.0. Although I doubt that even means anything to you as you're obviously a *Snip*
*If you can't post without that much name calling and aggression towards others, do not post. -Ironhorse*
"embracing interesting mechanics" is not mutually exclusive with bein accessible.
A mechanice being easy to understand is not mutually exclusive with a high skill-ceiling.
Reading through this and other discussions apparently a lot of people that are in favour of "bunnyhopping" put the emphasis on the wrong aspect of skill-based movement systems. Too often "putting in the effort to learn the mechanic" is confused with "willingness to search for ressources outside the game to learn about the mechanic in the first place". NS2 does a horrible job at explaining a lot of its mechanics. A lot of people completely underestimate the huge advantage in knowledge they have if they are playing since the beta, etc. A game explaining its mechanics if not "serving entitled cod-noobs stuff on a silver platter", it's good game design.
I am not opposed to a skill-based movement mechanic, I actually WELCOME it. I am against the elitist notion of "obsure" mechanics. The knowledge that it exists and how it works should be easily accessible in the game for everyone. After learning about the mechanic in game I should not have to wonder how some other player pulled off that sick movement, but I should be able to apprechiate his use of it and aspire to use it as good as her. The emphasis here is on USING the mechanic.
We can appreciate a race driver, to give an example, for accelerating and breaking at the right time for exactly the right duration, steer just right and drift around a corner perfectly. All those mechanics are easily understood by people. Push the gas/breaks results in acceleration/deceleration. Turning the wheel changes direction. Add in simple information about how a handbreake works and what friction is, and - voila - the theory of drifting is NOT OBSCURE SAGE KNOWLEDGE. Go to any of those "drive safety" courses. People can pull off a drift EASILY. They are however not able to drift around corners perfectly like a race driver.
Want another videogame related example? Take skiing in the Tribes series (actually started as a gameplay bug that was embrased by the players and became icony to the series). Using your jetpack to control height is a concept that is very easy to grasp. Holding down a button to glide down a slope is a concept that is easy to graps, too. Chaining those two together is logical and thus EASILY ACCESSIBLE. Does it meann it is not skill-based? No it doesn't. Reading the terrain, finding "routes", improvising new routes on the fly, adjust for small errors you might make, etc. all factors in. All these things are easily understandable, the are based on our common everyday knowledge about how physics work.
A skill-based movement system that is obscure, hard to graps, grounded on the notion of "complicated = skillful" is a bad thing. QWOP-Jumping... bleh.
We're not here to clean up the mess you create... So if you don't want your posts decimated by snips like that, post in a more civilized manner...
Not sure I understand this obsession with casual players and the holy "new player" that some people have on this forum, as if it were some sort of odd religion where we get to prove how pious we are the more we mention "new player" in our posts. Next minute the church of new player will be selling indulgences and having confessionals for the sin of not saying 3 hail Mary's every time you mention the word bhop.
New players and casuals who find it all so hard and confusing really don't have as much value as people think, as they are unlikely to become comp players (aka the spawn of Lucifer) due to being too stupid and lacking initiative, while also having already paid their money (so who gives a poo poo anyway). Not worth wasting UWE resources on the infinite ways in which we can explain and make intuitive and make accessible and make friendly every potentially challenging mechanic. That's the difference between the new gamer and old gamer; the latter took initiative and was generally more intelligent while the former is a left side of bell curve knuckle dragger who like that long haired stoner idiot kid in that viral video (where he bitches about education not being engaging) needs to be spoon fed everything.
I for one enjoy a new game where I don't know how to do anything and it takes me time to discover all the neat tricks. When you tell people how to do everything straight up you take away the fun of learning and further perpetuates stupidity.
You can have easy mechanics with a challenging game.
I like dark souls, it gives you a dodge, a block, and a button to hit stuff with, your choices determine how well you block, how you hit stuff, and how fast you can dodge. It puts you up against a variety of enemies which hit you in a variety of ways, and require their own combinations of dodging, blocking, and hitting in order to beat them. You have buttons to move in directions, buttons to hit stuff, and a button to stop stuff hitting you, there's no need for anything even remotely resembling a bunnyhop style series of button presses and I'd say even skulk walljumping is less comprehensible and less engaging than almost all of the dark souls combat mechanics.
The game remains pleasantly challenging, interesting, and enjoyable. If you mess up, it kills you, though happily it doesn't smack you down very hard, it just makes you do the area again until you get it right. If you want to wager more than just a bit of ingame xp/cash on your success, you can do that, but you don't have to. The game rewards patience and not falling for easy traps, it rewards studying your enemy and learning how to beat them, and it rewards experimentation with lots of different equipment combinations to find the one best suited for you, and for your enemies.
The game is not, arguably, very difficult, because anyone with half a brain and some understanding of how to use a gamepad can beat it, given time. But it is challenging, engaging, interesting, and entertaining.
It's a good example of a game that doesn't need a tutorial, because it's so simple, but which does expect a good performance from you, and won't simply hand you the next area on a plate. The game tells you exactly how you to do everything you need to do to beat it, the rest is simply getting good at doing those things. It's a lot like the action-rpg equivalent of super mario really, you don't need to be told how to play it, really, and a lot of the joy in it is experiencing it for yourself, but the few mechanics it has, it uses well, and gets an awful lot of mileage out of.
Simple mechanics are not boring mechanics, it is almost always better to do more with existing mechanics than trying to pile more on for the sake of it.
Nobody is arguing that the mechanics themselves (in this case bunnyhopping) need to be unintuitive and convoluted to be good. That would be ridiculous. That is also why the argument for bunnyhopping in ns2 is based on three substantial claims: (1) There is currently no other movement mechanic with sufficient depth that can be applied to ns2, nor is there likely to be invented one given that the collective games industry have not been able to produce one over the past 20 years or so, (2) The advantages of bunnyhopping are so great that even when considering the disadvantages, it is still a net positive addition to the game, and (3) It is possible to negate most, if not all, of the disadvantages of bunnyhopping through redesigning the mechanic for ns2.
I've yet to see anyone be able to refute a single one of these claims, let alone all of them considered together, throughout the way-too-many-years bunnyhopping has been discussed on these forums.
Superedit: Tribes skiing is a good example of a very different mechanic that has a great deal of depth, that works well in a game that is completely different from ns2. It is, however, not intuitive, nor is it easy to learn, as a poster claimed earlier in this thread (as evidenced by the myriad of hour long tutorials on youtube if anyone is skeptical). It is also interesting to note that skiing was not intended design, it was a result of unintended consequences from the game engine physics, just like bunnyhopping.
Well I'd probably counter by saying that as far as I'm concerned, 1. I don't really think that bunnyhopping is a particularly deep mechanic in and of itself, it's just a timing puzzle added to the sprint key, all the other depth is a product of movement in combat, which you would have with any movement system.
2. I subsequently am not really aware of any advantages, really, to bunnyhopping being in the game.
3. While I'm sure you could rework it to be easy to use, as I said, the only thing it does that I'm aware of is add a timing puzzle that makes you move faster, if you make the timing puzzle easy to do, it begs the question of why it's there in the first place.
Bunnyhopping kind of is something that is only 'good' if it is complicated and non-transparent, because that's the only thing that makes it a thing. Otherwise it's like... It's a little bit like putting in a 'mash the button really fast' sequence into the mechanics for opening doors. It wouldn't add anything other than just being kind of pointless, just make it so you press the use key to open the door, or make the door open itself when you get near it. It's fine to have unlocking minigames to open some doors, but not a really banal and easy thing you just have to do all the time.
The tribes example I don't really agree with either, I played a little bit of some tribes game once, I had a jetpack which handled like you would expect a jetpack to, hold jump to go higher, and you slid around I think by holding a key? It wasn't complicated or unintuitive, you press the slide key and you slide, going downhill makes you go faster, going off a jump makes you fly into the air. It's intuitive because anyone who's ever rolled a ball down a hill knows how the momentum works. Or even driven a car in a videogame, because driving games of course make you go faster downhill and make you jump when you hit a ramp. It draws from a lot of other existing ideas which are well understood by almost anyone I'd think. The depth comes from extrapolation of that mechanic. It's basically like a driving game if your car had jumpjets really, that's what I took from it anyway. It doesn't rely on any complex controls and there's a lot you can do with the terrain. Honestly you could probably add sliding like that to the gorge and it'd be kinda cool in NS2. Press slide button, commence sliding. It's about as simple as press sprint to go faster, just with other stuff you can do too.
i think the tribes example works well - the movement is easy to learn, hard to master. you click to go up, hold to slide. it works the same for everyone and the way it works is immediately apparent.
fana, as for your claims - ofcourse no one is able to refute them in your eyes as they rely on your subjective valuations of what is worthwhile or desirable in the game - ie your opinion. you are entitled to it ofcourse - but you shouldn't imply that those you disagree are irrational - this is not mathematics, its game design.
That too, actually, aiming is extremely simple in NS2, as you say you point and click, movement would therefore have to be press and go. Bunnyhopping and most of the proposed movement mechanics in general, actually, are far more complicated than the point and click approach. That's actually my current complaint with the skulk. Marines point and click on stuff to kill it, skulks have to do that in melee while moving and dodging in order to even get close.
Skulks are already much more involved than marines are, which is why they're kinda crap as far as I'm concerned, they may be good in skilled hands but they're harder to use, which is in itself a weakness, especially given the massive disparity in player ability on most teams in most games.
This is something you've repeated during bunnyhop discussions for years on these forums, yet all it does is prove that you don't understand how bunnyhopping actually works. The timing element has been a necessary part of bunnyhopping in the past, but it is not what makes it interesting or deep, which is why the timing element has been removed from the pseudo bunnyhop in the current balance mod.
No, it really isn't. All this statement does, as I said above, is prove that you don't understand how bunnyhopping works (which is kind of amazing considering how many of these debates you have participated in by now). The pseudo bunnyhop in the balance mod currently does away with all the key combinations previously associated with bunnyhopping. All you have to do to use it is to release and hold jump between each jump (a "queued jump" system, ie. no timing required) to gain speed. It still has most of the depth associated with previous vesions of bunnyhopping.
If I wanted to I could describe even classic quake bunnyhopping in terms that would make it seem equally intuitive; it still doesn't make it so in reality. If tribes skiing is intuitive, so is bunnyhopping, even more so the current ns2 balance mod pseudo bunnyhop.
Ideally, this is the case, but in practice it is very difficult to accomplish. The current balance mod pseudo bunnyhop is pretty much there, though. You'd have to have some sort of physical or mental disability to not be able to learn and use it easily.
Arguing that a game should not have depth is irrational. As for the particular merits of the claims themselves, those are very much open to argumentation. For example, one could argue that it is not possible to make bunnyhopping more intuitive (as Christ0132 attempted to above), but one would be incorrect. Just because you don't like the conclusion, doesn't mean you can define it as "subjective" and pretend it doesn't matter.
It is true that the melee alien lifeforms are generally harder to play than marines for rookie players, but not because they are "harder to use". It is simply because while most players have a significant amount of experience shooting things from previous games, almost none will have any experience playing a melee class against opponents using ranged weapons. There is no way to fix that other than redesigning the melee classes to be like the most recent AVP incarnation, in which case you may as well just delete the entire game from the Internet because it will not be worth playing by anyone.
Conversely, the skill curve for melee aliens tops out much earlier than that for aiming as marines. A movement system with depth, like bunnyhopping, extends the melee alien skill curve slightly to alleviate that problem.
A skilled fade can already win the entire match for aliens, heck a single lerk can do it if they're good enough
I understand your point, but removing something just because a part of the playerbase will have trouble learning it/fighting it is not a good idea, and you don't find yourself facing similar skilled people as it is right now, this would be solved by a form of pug/matching system; that's a major problem the game has right now
It's the same problem that exist in, counter-strike 1.6 or source for example, you sign in and there's a bunch of servers, but nothing to play (for the competitive based player) we see 24 slot, deathmatch combat whatever and just don't want any of it; so what do we do? exit the game? or join a rookie server and just endlessly slaughter an entire team.. of course the solution for NA counter-strike is to get ESEA and do pugs, which also don't really work because anyone can join the pug and the skill system they match you on promotes individuality instead of teamwork, heck stats are so important it can determine if a team even gives you a try out (wrong, you can't determine someones skill from pugs played with random players)
So what I'm saying is, matchmaking
Of course the playerbase we have isn't huge, but it can work; if after a few wins it marks you in a "higher" bracket and you can then face competitive players in a 6v6 environment, I'd be thrilled. Just look at how well it worked in halo 2 (yeah console, whatever) as soon as you got to the higher levels games were being decided constantly by ONE point, they were intense, and everyone was competing to their best to attempt to rank up (ultimately later ruined by massive amounts of cheating) and the rank system was simple, win matches rank up, unlike the latter versions of the series which moved to trueskill and ended up being horribly abused and causing "rank" locks meaning you could win dozens of times and never move in rank, so people would smurf to max rank causing the lower brackets of matchmaking to get destroyed by people who were of high level --anyway going super off topic here--
So, the new movement shouldn't be removed, if anything replaced by an alternative (but what else works?) and some type of pug system should be put into place and all your problems would essentially be gone. Leave the server browser to regular community servers and games, and turn all the official servers into matching servers (no offense but they aren't really currently being used)
i never argued against depth so im not sure why you imply i do? what i mean about your claims being subjective is that you are looking at things from a certain angle, with your own ideas and ideology but the simple fact is that there is no ultimate right or wrong in these things. but by claiming people who hold differing opinions to yours as being irrational, you are trying to shut down the conversation because its not going entirely your way and thats not cool.