You wouldn't, if basic marines only had the rifle and people were complaining they were boring, welcome the addition of shotguns as this wonderful game changing thing that will make everything better, at least I assume you wouldn't. I would assume you'd say 'you spent how many months on this problem and the best you can come up with is shotguns?'
I don't expect a panacea from the devs. However; if after months of play with just LMGs they introduced shotguns as an answer to "more dynamic and skill based marine play" it would be true. And my "dislike" of shotguns would not make it false.
Some skill based movement mechanic is necessary for the skulk. Your dislike of the mechanic does not negate the need.
Additionally, the balance mod seems to be trying "something different". I'm sure adding true "bhopping" would have been much easier and faster than trying to make something different.
I would be less concerned except there are a lot of people in this thread saying that adding bunnyhopping is a panacea, that it really is all the skulk will ever need and that everyone else is an idiot.
I would object less if bunnyhopping was being added like shadowstep was to the fade, as a somewhat useful but not at all replacement for blink, but that's not really what people are suggesting here, for the most part.
Frankly, it will help the skulk a lot. Movement is really the main tool a skulk has. Granted it will only help the people that are willing to put the time in to learn how to use it right, but that can be said of any game mechanic. It really seems that this is just a prejudice against bhopping on your part. A skill based movement gives an organic quality to skulk movement. If there were simply a "runfastar" button for the skulk and everyone just held it down, it would be quite easy for the Marines to adjust to. Having it skill based means that most skulks will move at varying rates. Can you not see how this is better than the "runfastar" button?
@thelawenforcer Of course, all we NS1 vets do is troll on new players. We have club meetings and everything.
considering that fana considers that anyone know disagrees with him is irrational, and that you implied that we are a) stupid and b) noobs for having a different opinion to you or him ye i think you guys are being dicks.
Chris, you are not forced to learn Bhop. There were many people who were VERY good who never bhopped in NS1. It's a tool you can add to your toolbox. Not learning it means you have less tools for closing distance and will have to rely on playing smart/ambushing more.
That's what I don't get about this lashing out. I never liked bhop, so I didn't use it. I still did well and skulk was still one of my favorite life forms (I used to be that guy that called first dibs on dropping hives, skulks don't need res).
What exactly is the problem? Are they nerfing every other aspect of skulk so you have to bhop? No, they aren't....you should be able to skulk just as well now as you did before and if you learn to the mechanic you MAY do a little better.
I found be hop makes me worse because it encourages the rush mentality I'm always finding in game, so YMMV.
Chris, you are not forced to learn Bhop. There were many people who were VERY good who never bhopped in NS1. It's a tool you can add to your toolbox. Not learning it means you have less tools for closing distance and will have to rely on playing smart/ambushing more.
That's what I don't get about this lashing out. I never liked bhop, so I didn't use it. I still did well and skulk was still one of my favorite life forms (I used to be that guy that called first dibs on dropping hives, skulks don't need res).
What exactly is the problem? Are they nerfing every other aspect of skulk so you have to bhop? No, they aren't....you should be able to skulk just as well now as you did before and if you learn to the mechanic you MAY do a little better.
I found be hop makes me worse because it encourages the rush mentality I'm always finding in game, so YMMV.
Like I said, I disagree with the idea that fiddling with the skulk jumping mechanics is all the class needs. It's not good enough as far as I'm concerned.
I have no objection to bunnyhopping as a skulk equivalent to shadowstep, but I expect a skulk equivalent of blink as well.
People are arguing that bunnyhopping + walljumping + whatever other nonsensical jumping behaviour they may add = the entire fade ability set in terms of interestingness and enjoyability. I do not agree. I am concerned that this will be treated as 'ok we fixed the skulk it's great now' and all the people who just really love bunnyhop will say 'yes yes you did it doesn't need anything else doing to it ever' and I'll be stuck playing with this heap of crap stupid dog thing that doesn't do anything good for the rest of NS2's lifespan.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
To many posts on hops.
Well I said it before, I will say it again. I hate and detest the hop.
Yes, with help of ppl like zeke, I do know what to do. Yes its somewhat similar to bunnyhop. Yes I could bunnyhop in NS1 and yes with practise I will get better with the bt hop.
Still hate it. Im with the group who simply doesnt have the motor control to keep doing the hop on a long term basis without sacrificing a lot of mental focus in other areas. Bhop & other games teached me I can lessen this 'handicap' but its impossible to remove and the lost mental focus is quite big.
The better I hop, the more tired both my mind & my fingers get. I fail to see why we need a nonintuitive, tiring and motorskill stressing mechanic like hop in the game to please the top players.
I will expect ppl to say I just need to practise. Something I have been doing quite a while lately in both listenserver and BT servers.
And it showed what I already knew from old bhop.. the better I need to be & the more speed I can, the more tired I become due to the motor skill which I simply cant keep up for long periods.
Joined with the point that I do believe that skulks should stay of the damn floor if they are close to marines and I see no reason whatsoever for a hop.
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.
It was actually an invitation for opponents of bunnyhopping to make valid arguments against it, not whatever it is you're trying to say in this post.
I'm posting that pic because clearly that's what you think of us vets and not what we do. You should read his posts again @thelawenforcer. I see the 'point' you are making about the skulk, but just like Fana said: over 20 years and there's still no other fun movement mechanics invented.
How about you post some actual ideas instead of saying how bad and unintersting the skulk movement is to you? There's alot of valid points being made here which you clearly aren't acknowledging. Ps. No one said you were an idiot for disagreeing.
Almost all other movement mechanics in the game are fun. Jetpacks are fun, flying is fun, teleporting is fun. Tribes skiing is fun since that was mentioned.
1) It seems to be like giving up. Now let's be brutally honest here, the NS2 community, as gaming communities go, contains a fairly high proportion of reasonably intelligent people. It probably also contains a reasonably high proportion of creative and imaginative people. Attempting to recreate an old mechanic that originated from an engine bug is unimaginative: it's giving up on finding something that's both intuitive and gives the suitable level of depth. The wall-jumping mechanic is one possible example of a skill-based movement mechanic, but I refuse to believe there aren't other possibilities out there. If I were a modder, I would love to write a mod exploring a variety of different movement mechanic possibilities to test them out. Alas, I am not and can only post here my desire to do this, or to see it done.
I kind of agree that it's a damn problematic and somewhat unimaginative solution. However, as others have already pointed out, there hasn't been anything better figured out in the last 15 years or so.
Furthermore, as it was said during the beta already, the longer we are stuck with an insufficient version of wallhop, the more likely it is that something like bhop has to be brought back. I didn't expect it to happen 6 months after the release though, but I believe the point stands. If there actually is a new and creative solution somewhere, the chances are that it has to be build up with time, patience and clear goals and it has to be build alongside the rest of the game so that the parts fit together nicely.
If we have to hastily slap a solution to a game that is already there and repeats loads of the patterns and characteristics of NS1, I feel bhop is getting a massive head start compared to any other solution.
@thelawenforcer Of course, all we NS1 vets do is troll on new players. We have club meetings and everything.
considering that fana considers that anyone know disagrees with him is irrational, and that you implied that we are a) stupid and b) noobs for having a different opinion to you or him ye i think you guys are being dicks.
@ roobubba - thank you
Just as a bit of an advice, if you seriously want to have your ideas respected and all that, it's worth considering that you start capitalizing some letters and forming full sentences. That's showing basic respect to anyone who you're arguing with.
Until then it's very annoying to even try to make sense of your thoughts.
Again, every other mechanic in the game is a better mechanic than bunnyhopping.
Except possibly walljumping.
But apart from that, all of the other movement options in the game are cool and interesting. Skulk wallwalking is more interesting for heaven's sake. I use that all the time, and do all sorts of cool stuff with it. A few people have already said that bunnyhopping is particulary silly because it runs contrary to the existing, engaging mechanic of the skulk.
The bizzare obsession with the skulk having some sort of jump-button based movement mechanic just... escapes me. Even its active ability is little more than a bigger jump. Nobody's even tried moving it beyond some variation on pressing the jump key to get a slightly-different kind of jump in certain situations.
If you want a jump mechanic try... christ I dunno, change leap so it charges up and fires you off the wall and when you hit players it does damage. Instant applications for long range mobility, ambushing, and potentially combat applications in groups. It could still use something that's useable in open combat but that's already more interesting than more or less anything the skulk can currently do. It does something different, something the other classes can't do. You can turn yourself into an alien torpedo, and I'm sure you would have this great ballistic prediction element to it too, getting longer and longer jumps with more skill, and maybe rewarding doing it off the ceiling with more damage for gravity-assisted impacts.
Everyone can jump, we've been jumping in games for ages, slightly different jumping mechanics are kinda dull. It's like making a game with the same old pistol > machinegun > shotgun > sniper rifle > rocket launcher weapon progression and set. Or the more modern equivalent in the form of pistol > assault rifle > other assault rifle > more different assault rifle > assault rifle with big magazine > assault rifle with grenade launcher > semi automatic assault rifle...
[...] So to the die-hard bhop-or-bust crew, I say this: I absolutely agree with what you're trying to do, but can we not think outside of this bhop box to come up with something better?
I seriously doubt anyone is saying "bhopping proper is the only method of providing skill based movement for the skulk".
If something that was equally skill based, equally effective, and shiny and new was presented, I'm sure it would be not only well received but welcomed.
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.
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.
Just going to point something out. While in terms of the history of NS specifically you're right. But the fact is, as matso was pointing out, that bhop WAS without a doubt a bug in the original HALF LIFE code, which NS1 used, actually based off the quake engine. While I'm also one of those in favor of bhop (because it's just fun to do), I'm not going to be ignorant of the fact that is really did come from an un-intended bug of the air physics in the game. It wouldn't have been nearly as big a deal if Counter Striker's didn't rule the world in the view of Valve at the time, who did actually limit it's use in all of their mods (HL/CS/TFC). The NS1 developers opted to keep it in, to their merit, in theirs.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I will not say I have any idea on a alternative.
But I would love to see a movement skill which is still hard to master but with a lot less keys to use. I do not mind learning movement or new ways. But I would like to have a movement where people with lesser motor skill can actually perform the needed actions.
I will keep thinking of a alternative but what I would like to see if some of the comp players with more experience think of a acceptable alternative which involves less keys while being equally difficult.
Hope that will be less motor harsh then.
You don't understand what's unintuitive about increasing your forward velocity by continually jumping in a tangential fashion perpendicular to the forward vector? What universe do you live in, again? Because it's certainly not the one we live in, if you think that's intuitive. In our universe what is intuitive is that you apply force to an object in one direction then it goes faster in that direction. What bunnyhopping is is a bug in vector addition that's trying to model the world we live in. (In much the same way other movement skills like strafejumping and wallrunning were).
You don't understand what's unintuitive about increasing your forward velocity by continually jumping in a tangential fashion perpendicular to the forward vector? What universe do you live in, again? Because it's certainly not the one we live in, if you think that's intuitive. In our universe what is intuitive is that you apply force to an object in one direction then it goes faster in that direction. What bunnyhopping is is a bug in vector addition that's trying to model the world we live in. (In much the same way other movement skills like strafejumping and wallrunning were).
Roller/Ice Skating would like a word with you. Granted, the force is not applied "perpendicularly", but it is still quite similar.
@b1 i have posted ideas in the mod thread actually... this thread was started as a place for a general conversation to take place about the approach being used by UWE in implementing this mod.
fun is subjective and i find your ex post facto rationalisation of the use of the picture unconvincing.
my issue with the bhop debate is that the desired outcome for some people was determined at the outset. i dont feel like there was ever a serious search for alternatives. specifically, i feel that the 'skill' aspect of the movement should not revolve around acceleration, and should be more control oriented. it should also be more or less obvious what the mechanics are straight away.
in my experience hardcore gamers are one of the most conservative groups - it was surprising to see some of them pushing for radical changes - until you do some research and put it in context - that the radical changes are actually reactionary reversions inspired by how things used to be, or actually just the pretty much the same as they used to be in the past. what happened to adapt or die?
If your going to post saying there was not a serious search for alternatives, you have either not been paying attention for the past 3 years, or are clueless. However if you happen to have any alternatives, you should start suggesting them...
I will not say I have any idea on a alternative.
But I would love to see a movement skill which is still hard to master but with a lot less keys to use. I do not mind learning movement or new ways. But I would like to have a movement where people with lesser motor skill can actually perform the needed actions.
I will keep thinking of a alternative but what I would like to see if some of the comp players with more experience think of a acceptable alternative which involves less keys while being equally difficult.
Hope that will be less motor harsh then.
Well, I left the idea of dash jumping over here. It was already met with some resistance, but I still kind of feel it's a workable idea if done right.
In practice it would still be a bhop system, but with easier starting mechanic that would allow you to be quite impactful and have quite a lot of the bhop depth at your disposal without having to focus much at all on the mechanical side.
The key idea is that since you benefit from the use of the dash jump as a skulk almost right away, you're able to use it regularly ingame. That allows you get comfortable with the basics at your own pace and possibly slowly work yourself deeper into the mechanic if you feel like doing so.
So yeah, it's bhop based, but I believe it would be doable and meaningful with very limited motor skills. I don't know how well this would do in terms of skill scaling, but I feel even the situational use of bhop start jump would allow quite a lot of variation in skills.
i don't know anyone who is opposed to an acceleration mechanic
using lateral movement to gain forward momentum is what irritates people
there's nothing wrong with sprinting/leaping/grappling if they all use up an energy meter
it's accessible
each ability is situational
it's actually strategic (risk & reward instead of pure reward)
it doesn't compound the problems with the engine
it works perfectly with the celerity/adrenaline tradeoff and gives more reason to put shifts on the map
the only thing walljump is needed for is to maintain speed while changing directions
some sort of sliding could be another way of doing that (eg. crouchslide while turning)
it's just better game design to give players a choice between interesting toys instead of a recipe they need to follow to move X% faster
There is a lot of misinformation flying around about what UWE is and is not going to do with 'Balance Mod.' Here is clarification, and the whole truth.
First up, well done @thelawenforcer for starting this discussion. Let's not mince words: Balance Mod makes huge changes to the game and it may as well be considered a new version of NS2. Having discussions about it is very important. Though your post title could have used a '?'!
Balance Mod is a mod. There is no 'official plan' to replace Vanilla NS2 with Balance Mod. It is a creative experiment by Andi that has produced wonderful, useful, pertinent discussion about how to design asymmetrical multiplayer games.
Most people at UWE have no idea what is in Balance Mod, or how it differs from Vanilla NS2. It is very much a 'skunkworks' project. There is no master plan. At no time has everyone at UWE sat down and discussed if we want to make such a huge change to NS2.
Making a huge change like replacing Vanilla NS2 with Balance Mod would not be simply a case of swapping out some Lua code:
1. Entire official tutorial systems would have to be ripped out and replaced
2. The collective NS2 playerbase would have to relearn how to play. That includes pubbers!
3. Balance Mod has not undergone the rigorous and continuous playtesting that Vanilla has and does. The immediate impact on the programming crew would taking time away from other projects to join a bug-hunt.
4. The sum total collective learning resources of the NS2 community would be rendered outdated. Thousands of YouTube videos, dozens of recorded competitions, tens of thousands of hours of livestreams, carefully crafted community tutorials.
That's not to say it won't happen. Or it will happen. Or that parts of Balance Mod will or will not make it into Vanilla NS2. No one knows, and that's why forum threads like this are important. There are big questions to ask about which direction NS2 is going to go in, and what we as a community want to experience when we double click that little Hive icon.
In a discussion like this, it is easy to come to the conclusion that 'everyone' agrees with you. Seeing a post you agree with getting lots of 'Agrees,' or noticing lots of forum threads promoting your view. Reading an articulate poster pick apart an argument you do not like. But the fact is none of us know what 'everyone' wants. Step outside this forum to r/ns2, and the vibe is difference. Step from r/ns2 to facebook.com/naturalselection2 or @NS2 and the vibe changes totally, again. Join a pub game and people will give of yet another vibe. All those opinions are valid. All those people love NS2.
Those at the coal face, discussing Balance Mod here on the forums, need to consider carefully who 'everyone' is and what 'everyone' wants. What is best for the NS2 community as a whole?
There is a lot of misinformation flying around about what UWE is ... Here is clarification, and the whole truth.
... Let's not mince words ...
Balance Mod ... is ... 'official plan' to replace Vanilla NS2 ...
Most people at UWE have no idea what is in ... Vanilla NS2. It is very much a 'skunkworks' project. There is no master plan. At no time has everyone at UWE sat down and discussed if we want ... NS2.
Making a huge change like replacing Vanilla NS2 with Balance ... would not be simply a case of swapping out some Lua code:
...
2. The collective NS2 playerbase would have to ... learn how to play. That includes pubbers!
3. Balance Mod has ... undergone the rigorous and continuous playtesting ...
...
... it will happen. ...
In a discussion like this, ... 'everyone' agrees with you. ...
The TLDR version. No worries, I'll clean out my desk before you even read this
There is a lot of misinformation flying around about what UWE is ... Here is clarification, and the whole truth.
... Let's not mince words ...
Balance Mod ... is ... 'official plan' to replace Vanilla NS2 ...
Most people at UWE have no idea what is in ... Vanilla NS2. It is very much a 'skunkworks' project. There is no master plan. At no time has everyone at UWE sat down and discussed if we want ... NS2.
Making a huge change like replacing Vanilla NS2 with Balance ... would not be simply a case of swapping out some Lua code:
...
2. The collective NS2 playerbase would have to ... learn how to play. That includes pubbers!
3. Balance Mod has ... undergone the rigorous and continuous playtesting ...
...
... it will happen. ...
In a discussion like this, ... 'everyone' agrees with you. ...
The TLDR version. No worries, I'll clean out my desk before you even read this
In Balance mod, dont alien abilities also upgrade over time? In that sense, the skulk is buffed into late game. Extra movement mechanics are not the only buffs to the lifeform.
(Remember - My post wasn't passing a judgement on whether Balance Mod is a good or bad thing, only pointing out that it is a BIG THING and that there is no UWE 'Master Plan' - So we should all discuss more!)
thank you strayan for the clarification. the news on the competitive side was that this was going to happen - the two NS2 talkshows said it, the people i spoke to said it and seemed to have information to back that up.
Im glad to see the dev team has a more nuanced approach to this, something. im all for some of the spirit behind balance mod though so ill wait to see what happens.
Just to clarify a little bit, at the moment UWE is planning on moving forward with implementing the Balance Mod into Vanilla NS2 in some form, unless there is a huge outcry, which at the moment there does not seem to be. And as Hugh points out, this is a massive undertaking, and does come with a lot of risks. What has been more up in the air is the release date for that, and which features are going to make the final cut, and that is where we are trying to solicit as much feedback from the community as possible.
So I think the best thing to do is assume that we are going to incorporate a large amount of the mod into the game at some point soon, and if you want to have a say, play it. And play it a lot, not just a single game before passing judgement. And please don't just read the changelog before passing judgement, either.
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.
So much hyperbole.
Could you give me examples of what you are saying? The phrase, "Catering to the lowest common denominator," sounds cool and makes you seem way above those lowly noobs, but it doesn't really mean anything without context. HOW are games doing this? Are you talking about single player or multi-player? Shooters only, or all games? Since this is such a prevalent opinion amongst a certain type of gamer, I'd like to know what they are actually saying.
sorry to say this, but strayan and squeal_like_a_pig are kind of saying the opposite of each other -
hugh: "There is no 'official plan' to replace Vanilla NS2 with Balance Mod"
cory: "UWE is planning on moving forward with implementing the Balance Mod into Vanilla NS2 in some form"
the plot thickens...
My interpretation is that parts of the balance mod will likely be incorporated, but how much is still very much up for debate. UWE wants to watch the NS2 playerbase play the balance mod to see what works, what doesn't work, and what can be improved before they make a final decision.
If that process sounds familiar to you its because that's pretty much how the NS2 alpha/beta worked.
Comments
Frankly, it will help the skulk a lot. Movement is really the main tool a skulk has. Granted it will only help the people that are willing to put the time in to learn how to use it right, but that can be said of any game mechanic. It really seems that this is just a prejudice against bhopping on your part. A skill based movement gives an organic quality to skulk movement. If there were simply a "runfastar" button for the skulk and everyone just held it down, it would be quite easy for the Marines to adjust to. Having it skill based means that most skulks will move at varying rates. Can you not see how this is better than the "runfastar" button?
considering that fana considers that anyone know disagrees with him is irrational, and that you implied that we are a) stupid and b) noobs for having a different opinion to you or him ye i think you guys are being dicks.
@ roobubba - thank you
That's what I don't get about this lashing out. I never liked bhop, so I didn't use it. I still did well and skulk was still one of my favorite life forms (I used to be that guy that called first dibs on dropping hives, skulks don't need res).
What exactly is the problem? Are they nerfing every other aspect of skulk so you have to bhop? No, they aren't....you should be able to skulk just as well now as you did before and if you learn to the mechanic you MAY do a little better.
I found be hop makes me worse because it encourages the rush mentality I'm always finding in game, so YMMV.
Like I said, I disagree with the idea that fiddling with the skulk jumping mechanics is all the class needs. It's not good enough as far as I'm concerned.
I have no objection to bunnyhopping as a skulk equivalent to shadowstep, but I expect a skulk equivalent of blink as well.
People are arguing that bunnyhopping + walljumping + whatever other nonsensical jumping behaviour they may add = the entire fade ability set in terms of interestingness and enjoyability. I do not agree. I am concerned that this will be treated as 'ok we fixed the skulk it's great now' and all the people who just really love bunnyhop will say 'yes yes you did it doesn't need anything else doing to it ever' and I'll be stuck playing with this heap of crap stupid dog thing that doesn't do anything good for the rest of NS2's lifespan.
Well I said it before, I will say it again. I hate and detest the hop.
Yes, with help of ppl like zeke, I do know what to do. Yes its somewhat similar to bunnyhop. Yes I could bunnyhop in NS1 and yes with practise I will get better with the bt hop.
Still hate it. Im with the group who simply doesnt have the motor control to keep doing the hop on a long term basis without sacrificing a lot of mental focus in other areas. Bhop & other games teached me I can lessen this 'handicap' but its impossible to remove and the lost mental focus is quite big.
The better I hop, the more tired both my mind & my fingers get. I fail to see why we need a nonintuitive, tiring and motorskill stressing mechanic like hop in the game to please the top players.
I will expect ppl to say I just need to practise. Something I have been doing quite a while lately in both listenserver and BT servers.
And it showed what I already knew from old bhop.. the better I need to be & the more speed I can, the more tired I become due to the motor skill which I simply cant keep up for long periods.
Joined with the point that I do believe that skulks should stay of the damn floor if they are close to marines and I see no reason whatsoever for a hop.
I'm posting that pic because clearly that's what you think of us vets and not what we do. You should read his posts again @thelawenforcer. I see the 'point' you are making about the skulk, but just like Fana said: over 20 years and there's still no other fun movement mechanics invented.
How about you post some actual ideas instead of saying how bad and unintersting the skulk movement is to you? There's alot of valid points being made here which you clearly aren't acknowledging. Ps. No one said you were an idiot for disagreeing.
Furthermore, as it was said during the beta already, the longer we are stuck with an insufficient version of wallhop, the more likely it is that something like bhop has to be brought back. I didn't expect it to happen 6 months after the release though, but I believe the point stands. If there actually is a new and creative solution somewhere, the chances are that it has to be build up with time, patience and clear goals and it has to be build alongside the rest of the game so that the parts fit together nicely.
If we have to hastily slap a solution to a game that is already there and repeats loads of the patterns and characteristics of NS1, I feel bhop is getting a massive head start compared to any other solution.
Just as a bit of an advice, if you seriously want to have your ideas respected and all that, it's worth considering that you start capitalizing some letters and forming full sentences. That's showing basic respect to anyone who you're arguing with.
Until then it's very annoying to even try to make sense of your thoughts.
Except possibly walljumping.
But apart from that, all of the other movement options in the game are cool and interesting. Skulk wallwalking is more interesting for heaven's sake. I use that all the time, and do all sorts of cool stuff with it. A few people have already said that bunnyhopping is particulary silly because it runs contrary to the existing, engaging mechanic of the skulk.
The bizzare obsession with the skulk having some sort of jump-button based movement mechanic just... escapes me. Even its active ability is little more than a bigger jump. Nobody's even tried moving it beyond some variation on pressing the jump key to get a slightly-different kind of jump in certain situations.
If you want a jump mechanic try... christ I dunno, change leap so it charges up and fires you off the wall and when you hit players it does damage. Instant applications for long range mobility, ambushing, and potentially combat applications in groups. It could still use something that's useable in open combat but that's already more interesting than more or less anything the skulk can currently do. It does something different, something the other classes can't do. You can turn yourself into an alien torpedo, and I'm sure you would have this great ballistic prediction element to it too, getting longer and longer jumps with more skill, and maybe rewarding doing it off the ceiling with more damage for gravity-assisted impacts.
Everyone can jump, we've been jumping in games for ages, slightly different jumping mechanics are kinda dull. It's like making a game with the same old pistol > machinegun > shotgun > sniper rifle > rocket launcher weapon progression and set. Or the more modern equivalent in the form of pistol > assault rifle > other assault rifle > more different assault rifle > assault rifle with big magazine > assault rifle with grenade launcher > semi automatic assault rifle...
I want the movement equivalent of unreal tournament weapons. I want the skulk to be as cool as a car that shoots laser nets and has fold out swords on the side of it and nitro boosters.
I seriously doubt anyone is saying "bhopping proper is the only method of providing skill based movement for the skulk".
If something that was equally skill based, equally effective, and shiny and new was presented, I'm sure it would be not only well received but welcomed.
Just going to point something out. While in terms of the history of NS specifically you're right. But the fact is, as matso was pointing out, that bhop WAS without a doubt a bug in the original HALF LIFE code, which NS1 used, actually based off the quake engine. While I'm also one of those in favor of bhop (because it's just fun to do), I'm not going to be ignorant of the fact that is really did come from an un-intended bug of the air physics in the game. It wouldn't have been nearly as big a deal if Counter Striker's didn't rule the world in the view of Valve at the time, who did actually limit it's use in all of their mods (HL/CS/TFC). The NS1 developers opted to keep it in, to their merit, in theirs.
But I would love to see a movement skill which is still hard to master but with a lot less keys to use. I do not mind learning movement or new ways. But I would like to have a movement where people with lesser motor skill can actually perform the needed actions.
I will keep thinking of a alternative but what I would like to see if some of the comp players with more experience think of a acceptable alternative which involves less keys while being equally difficult.
Hope that will be less motor harsh then.
You don't understand what's unintuitive about increasing your forward velocity by continually jumping in a tangential fashion perpendicular to the forward vector? What universe do you live in, again? Because it's certainly not the one we live in, if you think that's intuitive.
Roller/Ice Skating would like a word with you. Granted, the force is not applied "perpendicularly", but it is still quite similar.
fun is subjective and i find your ex post facto rationalisation of the use of the picture unconvincing.
my issue with the bhop debate is that the desired outcome for some people was determined at the outset. i dont feel like there was ever a serious search for alternatives. specifically, i feel that the 'skill' aspect of the movement should not revolve around acceleration, and should be more control oriented. it should also be more or less obvious what the mechanics are straight away.
in my experience hardcore gamers are one of the most conservative groups - it was surprising to see some of them pushing for radical changes - until you do some research and put it in context - that the radical changes are actually reactionary reversions inspired by how things used to be, or actually just the pretty much the same as they used to be in the past. what happened to adapt or die?
In practice it would still be a bhop system, but with easier starting mechanic that would allow you to be quite impactful and have quite a lot of the bhop depth at your disposal without having to focus much at all on the mechanical side.
The key idea is that since you benefit from the use of the dash jump as a skulk almost right away, you're able to use it regularly ingame. That allows you get comfortable with the basics at your own pace and possibly slowly work yourself deeper into the mechanic if you feel like doing so.
So yeah, it's bhop based, but I believe it would be doable and meaningful with very limited motor skills. I don't know how well this would do in terms of skill scaling, but I feel even the situational use of bhop start jump would allow quite a lot of variation in skills.
using lateral movement to gain forward momentum is what irritates people
there's nothing wrong with sprinting/leaping/grappling if they all use up an energy meter
it's accessible
each ability is situational
it's actually strategic (risk & reward instead of pure reward)
it doesn't compound the problems with the engine
it works perfectly with the celerity/adrenaline tradeoff and gives more reason to put shifts on the map
the only thing walljump is needed for is to maintain speed while changing directions
some sort of sliding could be another way of doing that (eg. crouchslide while turning)
it's just better game design to give players a choice between interesting toys instead of a recipe they need to follow to move X% faster
First up, well done @thelawenforcer for starting this discussion. Let's not mince words: Balance Mod makes huge changes to the game and it may as well be considered a new version of NS2. Having discussions about it is very important. Though your post title could have used a '?'!
Balance Mod is a mod. There is no 'official plan' to replace Vanilla NS2 with Balance Mod. It is a creative experiment by Andi that has produced wonderful, useful, pertinent discussion about how to design asymmetrical multiplayer games.
Most people at UWE have no idea what is in Balance Mod, or how it differs from Vanilla NS2. It is very much a 'skunkworks' project. There is no master plan. At no time has everyone at UWE sat down and discussed if we want to make such a huge change to NS2.
Making a huge change like replacing Vanilla NS2 with Balance Mod would not be simply a case of swapping out some Lua code:
1. Entire official tutorial systems would have to be ripped out and replaced
2. The collective NS2 playerbase would have to relearn how to play. That includes pubbers!
3. Balance Mod has not undergone the rigorous and continuous playtesting that Vanilla has and does. The immediate impact on the programming crew would taking time away from other projects to join a bug-hunt.
4. The sum total collective learning resources of the NS2 community would be rendered outdated. Thousands of YouTube videos, dozens of recorded competitions, tens of thousands of hours of livestreams, carefully crafted community tutorials.
That's not to say it won't happen. Or it will happen. Or that parts of Balance Mod will or will not make it into Vanilla NS2. No one knows, and that's why forum threads like this are important. There are big questions to ask about which direction NS2 is going to go in, and what we as a community want to experience when we double click that little Hive icon.
In a discussion like this, it is easy to come to the conclusion that 'everyone' agrees with you. Seeing a post you agree with getting lots of 'Agrees,' or noticing lots of forum threads promoting your view. Reading an articulate poster pick apart an argument you do not like. But the fact is none of us know what 'everyone' wants. Step outside this forum to r/ns2, and the vibe is difference. Step from r/ns2 to facebook.com/naturalselection2 or @NS2 and the vibe changes totally, again. Join a pub game and people will give of yet another vibe. All those opinions are valid. All those people love NS2.
Those at the coal face, discussing Balance Mod here on the forums, need to consider carefully who 'everyone' is and what 'everyone' wants. What is best for the NS2 community as a whole?
The TLDR version. No worries, I'll clean out my desk before you even read this
I see what you did there. Clever!
Also @Comprox is a boss.
Im glad to see the dev team has a more nuanced approach to this, something. im all for some of the spirit behind balance mod though so ill wait to see what happens.
So I think the best thing to do is assume that we are going to incorporate a large amount of the mod into the game at some point soon, and if you want to have a say, play it. And play it a lot, not just a single game before passing judgement. And please don't just read the changelog before passing judgement, either.
So much hyperbole.
Could you give me examples of what you are saying? The phrase, "Catering to the lowest common denominator," sounds cool and makes you seem way above those lowly noobs, but it doesn't really mean anything without context. HOW are games doing this? Are you talking about single player or multi-player? Shooters only, or all games? Since this is such a prevalent opinion amongst a certain type of gamer, I'd like to know what they are actually saying.
hugh: "There is no 'official plan' to replace Vanilla NS2 with Balance Mod"
cory: "UWE is planning on moving forward with implementing the Balance Mod into Vanilla NS2 in some form"
the plot thickens...
If that process sounds familiar to you its because that's pretty much how the NS2 alpha/beta worked.