Sweeping changes to the balance of the game should have the opposite effect. It brings attention to the game, gets people who forgot about it to pick it up again, etc. It also revitalizes the active players. Current strategies become obsolete, so you need to change your strategies, thus the game becomes fresh again. People don't leave Dota in droves when a psycho comes out that affects more than half of ALL mechanics in the game. They are glad that games post-patch are different from the ones pre-patch. I love in n out but after a week of it, even McDonald's starts looking good.
Ns2 is plenty difficult. If uwe wants players to stick around for more than acouple hours, bunnyhopping is not where they should start. While it may be a good mechanic, no noob is leaving because its not there.
Nobody here wants to admit it, but ns2 would benefit a lot from becoming more casual. It's unfortunate that combat isn't officially supported, since that is probably the best way to get people initiated (as it turns out, noobs don't mind dying and getting unlucky ie going against a fed player).
But in my opinion the biggest problems are not even gameplay, but polish. When you get a kill in Dota 2, money drops, sounds notify you, colorful numbers pop up. in tf2, players sometimes blow up (satisfying), or you get a crit with a nice satisfying sound effect and colorful text. In ns2, killing a player results in an understated notification and a faint +5, making noobs wonder if they got a kill at all. While I think it looks better that way, you can't deny that the player is missing out on all sorts of positive feedback for playing the game.
Roobubba: Even ranged vs ranged benefits from skill-based movement. Warsow is a great example. In my opinion it adds depth to any FPS game. In fact, to compete with the greats of the past such as Q3CPMA, you need to have a skill-based movement. The lack of skill-based movement is reason why most modern FPS'es are boring.
Yes, I completely agree, as I said in my post!
Bunnyhopping in a floor vs floor game works well. It can also work well for NS, of course, we know that from NS1.
What I'm suggesting is that NS2 has a unique opportunity to break out from this mechanic and design something genuinely novel, because nothing previously (actually including L4D, as the hunter isn't an all-surface creature like the skulk) has had any need or opportunity to design something different.
To me, it makes sense to design a skill-based movement system that relies not on jumping on the floor, but instead uses the walls and ceilings as an integral part of the mechanic. It doesn't specifically have to be a 'way to move faster from A-B' either.
I'm really proposing that instead of bickering about bunnyhop, we put our collective heads together to brainstorm new ideas, see what might work, what doesn't, what can give longevity, what might be overpowered, or unfun.
But please, the basic premise behind my posts here calling for new thinking is that I totally agree: a skill-based movement mechanic would be a very good thing for the long term survival of NS2. Yes, we might be a little late to the party, but that shouldn't stop us from trying. We have a great opportunity now to develop something innovative - that can only be a good thing IMHO.
To me, it makes sense to design a skill-based movement system that relies not on jumping on the floor, but instead uses the walls and ceilings as an integral part of the mechanic. It doesn't specifically have to be a 'way to move faster from A-B' either.
This has been talked before a bit. Personally I feel requirement for walls or ceiling for movement skills is detrimental to the gameplay.
Skulks are naturally stronger in cramped spaces and weaker in open ground regardless of the movement options. By disabling the basic movement options on open ground, you're limiting skulk quite strictly to proximity of walls everywhere. That sounds like a very limited setup for a lifeform you'll be playing most of your alien gameplay.
I'm all for allowing skulk to use walls and ceiling in more versatile ways, but I think it's vital that skulk has a good set of tools regardless of their proximity.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
@Bacillus
I am sure you said bunnyhop somewhere, which includes a lot of keys.
Naturally any movement which can manage to still be hard to master with less keys would do better.
@Bacillus
I am sure you said bunnyhop somewhere, which includes a lot of keys.
Naturally any movement which can manage to still be hard to master with less keys would do better.
Yes. There's bhop in it. We can discuss about strafejumping and such as viable easier alternatives too, but that wasn't the point of my suggestion.
While accellerating with bhop requires a lot of keys, preserving speed doesn't necessary require anything more than timing your jumps (which is ridiculously easy with Q3 jumping). The idea of dash is that you're given that good starting speed that you can preserve and you don't have to go to the dreaded mouse & keyboard dance unless you really want to get every little bit out of your skulk. For your average public game skulking, the dash alone should more than sufficient source of speed and acceleration.
And if you want to start maxing out the movement skills, you already have a good start because it can all be slowly built on top of the already working routine of dash jumping and its speed preservation.
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If you still have NS1 around, you can probably try something similar by doing a leap or blink in Tram Tunnel in NS_Bast and try to preserve it by jumping. NS1 doesn't have the Q3 pogo jump, so you might want to bind your jump to mouse wheel or use a 3jump script though.
NS1 requires you to strafe if you want to preserve the speed in turns, but I think some NS2 implementations made that easier already too.
I suggested a Warsow style dash for the skulk more than a year ago and even made a mod for it (obviously not compatible with the latest build). I would very much like to see something like that instead of the sprint that's currently in the balance mod.
In NS1 we had circle jumping as a sort of mini leap for use in combat and it's actually doable with the new movement code, but it not near powerful enough to be useful. Mostly due to the ground friction being too high ("zomg ice skating!" :eyeroll:).
Is there any chance that there will be further clarification of this from UWE? the two statements very much seemed to say different things to me.
As Cory said, the official word is: Assume most of it is going in Vanilla NS2. Feedback from both players and the Balance Mod Tournament will help decide what, when and if things move over to Vanilla.
But of course there is always a chance it might not happen at all, but it's unlikely unless big problems are found.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
@Bacillus
still unsure if your suggestion would be a fix for the issue I am having. (and other are bound to have, i doubt im alone)
Continues fingermovement in a repeating patern with multiple keys. (strafeL & strafeR, jump, forward) while being 'only' 4 keys are very hard to keep using in the correct sequence for long durations for folk like me who simply do not have the motor skills to do so. It will go from LJRJLJRJ to stuff like LLJRJL or LJJRRJ or stuf being much more bad. Practise will do little to help in this problem. (practise makes me only able to do it untill it breaks but never in long sequence, unfortunately)
As you still need to use those keys to maintain speed, its not a fix. If I misunderstood and we actually do use less keys then it may work better.
Is there any chance that there will be further clarification of this from UWE? the two statements very much seemed to say different things to me.
As Cory said, the official word is: Assume most of it is going in Vanilla NS2. Feedback from both players and the Balance Mod Tournament will help decide what, when and if things move over to Vanilla.
But of course there is always a chance it might not happen at all, but it's unlikely unless big problems are found.
thats the problem obraxis, thats not the only official word. between hugh and cory, either someone is being dishonest or someone has been lied to - or UWE doesnt know whats happening with its own game. regardless, this whole thing stinks.
jiriki - warsow and cpma are great games, but they both experienced alot of difficulty in attracting players and growing a scene beyond a very small hardcore. its not worth turning NS2 into the same thing - especially because those that want to can indulge themselves with the mod can without forcing it on others.
*this post goes super off topic* - also at the l4d videos you show about visceral, he's on my F/L and just came back like two weeks ago and seems to be playing dota 2 after a year+ of being offline, if you want me to ask him questions about how the hunter works or something I'd be glad to do so; possibly he can offer insight and maybe we can test something out with leap?
They weren't advertised, you look at the next call of crap and tell me how many ads you see for it; heck I don't even care about the game and I already know it's coming out
There's posters
There's ads all over the internet
People are talking about it
It's literally sometimes a trending topic on twitter
The amount of ad revenue going into such a thing has a huge impact whether you like to think so or not, of course games spread easily via WOM (terraria) I mean I made half of my friends list get that game and none of them regretted it; I also have a lot of people on my F/L who own ns2 but do not currently play it, the complaints are the same via performance and one of them was upset that there was no skill based movement, the few of them I notified recently that there's a possibility skill based movement will return interested both of them
Warsow atm is on steam greenlight attempting to release as a F2P title, I believe if it came out as F2P and somehow made the mainpage of steam it could attract a massive amount of players, however I don't think warsow features the nice skill matching that something like quake live has; because when you join a server and QL tells you the person is above your skill level, it damn means it (not saying you won't win the duel) but whatever they use to track the skills is properly working because you get a nice competitive match most of the time
Anyway, the movement seems to be changing weekly and while it makes me slightly upset because I think the variations we had a while ago felt much better (especially the one with strafing being a more important factor) that seemed to be removed as of now and I'm really hoping it wasn't because one to three people spoke out about it when barely the entire community has touched upon it (and most I've seen who have really enjoyed it) just seems like the -no offense- ones who can't do it, complain about it
It's like accepting that battlefield 3 is an awful game, it handicaps a skilled player so much that you can barely tell the difference between a professional twitch gamer to the average pubstar; because it's as simple as holding M1 and being the "first person who shot" styled-type games which really ruins gaming
going even more off-topic it made me really upset what they turned TF2 into, sure it can still be played competitive but if you're not doing a scrim or a match, and just a general pug or public it's going to feel like shit with all the new random weapons amongst other garbage, game felt like a quality slow-paced teamwork twitch fps way back when, it's the same but it's not
ezekel - i have played warsow actively since its first public release more than 6 years ago. i am intimately aware of how much promotion the game got - and it got ALOT - perhaps not by the traditional media - but there was alot of grassroot efforts to promote awareness. it all pretty much proved fruitless because at several fundamental levels it was unappealing to alot of players.
also, stop trying to force your opinions on others as if they were some objective truth - they arent, they're just your opinion. btw, if you hate tf2 so much, go play FortressForever, you can concboost to you hearts content, along with the other 17 players.
huge emphasis on skillbased gameplay at the detriment of everything else and throwing money at a game will not work - look at the CPL world tour - they took an extremely skillful (but not particularly popular) game - Painkiller, threw shitloads of money at it with coverage and big prizes - it flopped. the same is happening with Shootmania.
anyway, UWE have apparently gone into bunker mode on this.
@Bacillus
still unsure if your suggestion would be a fix for the issue I am having. (and other are bound to have, i doubt im alone)
Continues fingermovement in a repeating patern with multiple keys. (strafeL & strafeR, jump, forward) while being 'only' 4 keys are very hard to keep using in the correct sequence for long durations for folk like me who simply do not have the motor skills to do so. It will go from LJRJLJRJ to stuff like LLJRJL or LJJRRJ or stuf being much more bad. Practise will do little to help in this problem. (practise makes me only able to do it untill it breaks but never in long sequence, unfortunately)
As you still need to use those keys to maintain speed, its not a fix. If I misunderstood and we actually do use less keys then it may work better.
The basic level stuff requires no wiggling, no need for fingermovement patterns or anything. Just do your dash (1 key) and after that use the simple pogo jumping (1 key) mechanic that requires no strict timing whatsoever. If you want to go straight forward in a line, you don't even necessarily need the mouse for that. Not even need for strafe keys, not at least until you have to adjust your direction.
From that point on you can work it further if you want and mix in small bits of bhop elements (way easier than learning bhop straight away, I think), but it's not expected or necessary for your average gamer by any means. You don't need to use any bhop to get good use out of the dash. Probably most people will have enough challenge in mastering the speed/predictability tradeoff and aiming their dashes.
Also, I don't think I really learned bhop as a strictly mechanical pattern and I'm not sure if I could even do that, but that's probably a different story.
In L4D hunter is the most interesting lifeform, no doubt about that. There are some tricks that take time to learn. Still, there is a big flaw in hunter's leap: leap sets you a certain movement path and you can't change that movement path. The leap is really easy to predict, and even if in those videos the leap looks entertaining, most of the time top level survivor would have skeeted (shot in air) all those hunters. That is reason why in top level play, you don't see often that long jumps by hunters. You want to stay in same movement path as short time as possible. This is the basic principle in all skill based movement mechanics. That said, hunter's leap is slightly better done that current skulk's walljump, but not competition for BH let alone for BH+Wall jump combination.
PS. L4D do have really basic BH, and in L4D2 it plays a role, without it jockey and boomer would be much worse lifeforms.
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.
how do you intend to quantify this outcry? will it be before or after? will it be based purely on these forums, or will you run a poll ingame to try and reach the maximum amount of players? I ask because you cannot possibly measure the outcry or lack of until you inform the entire player base of said changes. Seeing as even now we only have a 'confirmed denial' i wouldnt say that these plans have been effectively communicated to the community. to assume there is little or no outcry on these pretences seems to be a bit premature.
In L4D hunter is the most interesting lifeform, no doubt about that. There are some tricks that take time to learn. Still, there is a big flaw in hunter's leap: leap sets you a certain movement path and you can't change that movement path. The leap is really easy to predict, and even if in those videos the leap looks entertaining, most of the time top level survivor would have skeeted (shot in air) all those hunters. That is reason why in top level play, you don't see often that long jumps by hunters. You want to stay in same movement path as short time as possible. This is the basic principle in all skill based movement mechanics. That said, hunter's leap is slightly better done that current skulk's walljump, but not competition for BH let alone for BH+Wall jump combination.
PS. L4D do have really basic BH, and in L4D2 it plays a role, without it jockey and boomer would be much worse lifeforms.
Fair point, which is why I liked the video that showed the indoor hunter leaping. That seemed much more useful than those long-distance pounces.
You can have some degree of predictability to the movement mechanic with it still being fulfilling and deep. Otherwise, the 'effectively no air friction' skulking we had in previous builds would be considered superior to the more predictable bhop.
how do you intend to quantify this outcry? will it be before or after? will it be based purely on these forums, or will you run a poll ingame to try and reach the maximum amount of players? I ask because you cannot possibly measure the outcry or lack of until you inform the entire player base of said changes. Seeing as even now we only have a 'confirmed denial' i wouldnt say that these plans have been effectively communicated to the community. to assume there is little or no outcry on these pretences seems to be a bit premature.
Those that are still actively playing NS2 and giving their feedback on these forums are the ones who will be giving input.
Yes, its a sample bias.. but its also their hardcore fans and followers that helped shape this game in the first place over the years of open development and feedback.
This really is just the next step for NS2... 2.0 if you will.
Sure you could email everyone on the NS2 mailing list.. and they in fact may do this.. and sure those players might have an opinion on the matter.. and yes it may even be better than a vet's.
There's no method to contact every single NS2 customer though afiak
But they aren't around playing anymore or contributing anymore.. so i have a hard time seeing why they should be catered to, or worse, halt progress for the active base that is still contributing to get the game out of it that they so love?
I think the phrase "You decide your own level of involvement" is accurate in this case.
Good thing there's plenty of avenues in which to share your view here (in a civil manner, though, please) where the developers will be listening.
I think its also important to look at the bigger picture with the balance mod. Even I do not like some of the changes in the mod, and honestly there are some big topics I think are either left unchanged or are changed in ways they shouldn't be. That doesn't stop me from thinking that it largely improves gameplay, and is a huge step forward for the game. If the mod fixes/improves on 10 things and ruins 2 in my opinion, then its still a big improvement overall and is not something that should be disregarded.
Honestly, the worst thing they could do with NS2 is to just leave it as is, or only tweak small balance items. That's basically just giving up on the game, there's 0 chance for the playerbase to grow or the game depth to increase, and it will just keep bleeding players like it is now.
A sample bias means risk since you will never come close towards estimating how the majority of remaining players feel unless you at least make an ATTEMPT to reach out to most of the player base.
I still think UWE should raise awareness with a notice of proposed changes in the menu when you open the game. You already got a news feed in there why not put the proposed changes and leave a text box for feedback. Or even a poll to go with it? Google moderator was useful in determining the features players wanted most but that was shut down. We never even got an answer as to why it was closed and it provided decent feedback from hundreds of players. So what impression does this give? It just seems unnecessarily risky when you can implement the tools to get a generalized option on how good percentage of the players feel about certain changes using the in game menu.
how do you intend to quantify this outcry? will it be before or after? will it be based purely on these forums, or will you run a poll ingame to try and reach the maximum amount of players? I ask because you cannot possibly measure the outcry or lack of until you inform the entire player base of said changes. Seeing as even now we only have a 'confirmed denial' i wouldnt say that these plans have been effectively communicated to the community. to assume there is little or no outcry on these pretences seems to be a bit premature.
Those that are still actively playing NS2 and giving their feedback on these forums are the ones who will be giving input.
Yes, its a sample bias.. but its also their hardcore fans and followers that helped shape this game in the first place over the years of open development and feedback.
This really is just the next step for NS2... 2.0 if you will.
Sure you could email everyone on the NS2 mailing list.. and they in fact may do this.. and sure those players might have an opinion on the matter.. and yes it may even be better than a vet's.
There's no method to contact every single NS2 customer though afiak
But they aren't around playing anymore or contributing anymore.. so i have a hard time seeing why they should be catered to, or worse, halt progress for the active base that is still contributing to get the game out of it that they so love?
I think the phrase "You decide your own level of involvement" is accurate in this case.
Good thing there's plenty of avenues in which to share your view here (in a civil manner, though, please) where the developers will be listening.
if you look at the people posting in this thread, you will notice that a vast majority are repeat posters (guilty ^^) who have membership dating from before 31-10-2012 - the games launch date. since then the game has sold more than 400,000 copies, 144,000 in the first week alone! while i dont mean to say that each of these 400,000 are anywhere near as committed to NS2 as some, the vast majority naturally dont play anymore, but if you ask me, the future of Natural Selection as a franchise lies much more in the 400,000 than the tiny smattering of 'Agrees' on any post in this forum. I am extremely hopeful and almost assume that NS2 will not be the last installment in the series. thats my future of NS - not an NS2 mod that some hope to play for the next 10 years.
A sample bias means risk since you will never come close towards estimating how the majority of remaining players feel unless you at least make an ATTEMPT to reach out to most of the player base.
I still think UWE should raise awareness with a notice of proposed changes in the menu when you open the game. You already got a news feed in there why not put the proposed changes and leave a text box for feedback. Or even a poll to go with it? Google moderator was useful in determining the features players wanted most but that was shut down. We never even got an answer as to why it was closed and it provided decent feedback from hundreds of players. So what impression does this give? It just seems unnecessarily risky when you can implement the tools to get a generalized option on how good percentage of the players feel about certain changes using the in game menu.
Anything that doesn't request player feedback at random when playing the game is going to be biased (e.g. convenience sampling). However, not being a random sampling doesn't necessarily make it bad.
The best option is an in-game feedback system. Maybe have a section in the menu for players to provide feedback that is sent to a database. You could even allow the option to include your system specs, include a log/screenshot/video. Other than that, Reddit and the Steam forums are pretty good places to get more player feedback.
Here's the thing about the balance mod changes. The game has been out for a while now. The community has been getting smaller since the release. To throw in changes to foundations, like the 'movement revamp', will be too big a change for a lot of people. The community will get even smaller.
Here's the thing about the balance mod changes. The game has been out for a while now. The community has been getting smaller since the release. To throw in changes to foundations, like the 'movement revamp', will be too big a change for a lot of people. The community will get even smaller.
Here's the thing about the balance mod changes. The game has been out for a while now. The community has been getting smaller since the release. To throw in changes to foundations, like the 'movement revamp', will be too big a change for a lot of people. The community will get even smaller.
Wrong. History is against you
NS1 had growth from 1.04 -> 2.0 -> 3.0
I'm not saying that BT mod -> live will be successful, but there are a large amount of players that I know that this mod has rekindled their interest in the game. They are waiting for it to be released
PS: What happens if x amount of people leave, but z amount of people come back to the game because of the changes. That is what I predict will happen... z > x
Here's the thing about the balance mod changes. The game has been out for a while now. The community has been getting smaller since the release. To throw in changes to foundations, like the 'movement revamp', will be too big a change for a lot of people. The community will get even smaller.
Or it may actually get bigger again? Why exactly will it necessarily get smaller?
I for one am waiting for the mod to get released, and I would actively start playing again if it did.
Granted many people who quit playing probably did so because of performance, but I'm sure there's quite a lot of players out there who simply got bored with it and wouldn't mind a big overhaul. If said overhaul even makes the game more accessible on some levels (skulk play, alien scaling, bigger comeback potential) then it could additionally go a long way for player retention rates as well.
Just turn the implementation of the BT mod's biggest changes into a PR event with some fancy new weapon or features smacked on top to get even more attention.
how do you intend to quantify this outcry? will it be before or after? will it be based purely on these forums, or will you run a poll ingame to try and reach the maximum amount of players? I ask because you cannot possibly measure the outcry or lack of until you inform the entire player base of said changes. Seeing as even now we only have a 'confirmed denial' i wouldnt say that these plans have been effectively communicated to the community. to assume there is little or no outcry on these pretences seems to be a bit premature.
We have plans to promote the mod through the official channels, soon. Sewlek has been working towards finalizing the features, and then we can put it into the final phase of testing and get the word out to more people through blog posts, twitter feed, in game news, etc, to let them know that this could be the future of NS2 and to start playing and giving feedback if they want to have a say.
Feedback can be given on the forums - Sewlek has been reading every single post in those threads. It can be given in game - Sewlek is constantly playing on BT mod servers and watching and listening to player experiences. There is an upcoming BT tournament that teams are participating in, and we will be watching those and listening to the players opinions. There are and will be plenty of arguments for and against various features in the mod, and of course we won't please everyone with the changes. But we will listen, and, based on all the feedback we receive from all areas of the community, as well as our own judgement about what we feel is best for the future of NS2, we will make the final decisions about which elements to carry over from the mod into the game.
But people need to remember that how you present your opinions is as important as what they are. "OMG this mod sux and is going to kill NS2" is the kind of presentation of an opinion that does little to contribute to the ongoing discussion, and will likely result in those opinions being ignored. "I don't like ___ feature , because of ____ and ____ " is the sort of feedback we are looking for and that will matter.
Here's the thing about the balance mod changes. The game has been out for a while now. The community has been getting smaller since the release. To throw in changes to foundations, like the 'movement revamp', will be too big a change for a lot of people. The community will get even smaller.
Or it may actually get bigger again? Why exactly will it necessarily get smaller?
I for one am waiting for the mod to get released, and I would actively start playing again if it did.
Granted many people who quit playing probably did so because of performance, but I'm sure there's quite a lot of players out there who simply got bored with it and wouldn't mind a big overhaul. If said overhaul even makes the game more accessible on some levels (skulk play, alien scaling, bigger comeback potential) then it could additionally go a long way for player retention rates as well.
Just turn the implementation of the BT mod's biggest changes into a PR event with some fancy new weapon or features smacked on top to get even more attention.
Maybe you'd start actively playing again, if the BT mod became live with all/most of it's changes right now I'd probably quit.
Comments
Ns2 is plenty difficult. If uwe wants players to stick around for more than acouple hours, bunnyhopping is not where they should start. While it may be a good mechanic, no noob is leaving because its not there.
Nobody here wants to admit it, but ns2 would benefit a lot from becoming more casual. It's unfortunate that combat isn't officially supported, since that is probably the best way to get people initiated (as it turns out, noobs don't mind dying and getting unlucky ie going against a fed player).
But in my opinion the biggest problems are not even gameplay, but polish. When you get a kill in Dota 2, money drops, sounds notify you, colorful numbers pop up. in tf2, players sometimes blow up (satisfying), or you get a crit with a nice satisfying sound effect and colorful text. In ns2, killing a player results in an understated notification and a faint +5, making noobs wonder if they got a kill at all. While I think it looks better that way, you can't deny that the player is missing out on all sorts of positive feedback for playing the game.
That and performance.
Yes, I completely agree, as I said in my post!
Bunnyhopping in a floor vs floor game works well. It can also work well for NS, of course, we know that from NS1.
What I'm suggesting is that NS2 has a unique opportunity to break out from this mechanic and design something genuinely novel, because nothing previously (actually including L4D, as the hunter isn't an all-surface creature like the skulk) has had any need or opportunity to design something different.
To me, it makes sense to design a skill-based movement system that relies not on jumping on the floor, but instead uses the walls and ceilings as an integral part of the mechanic. It doesn't specifically have to be a 'way to move faster from A-B' either.
I'm really proposing that instead of bickering about bunnyhop, we put our collective heads together to brainstorm new ideas, see what might work, what doesn't, what can give longevity, what might be overpowered, or unfun.
But please, the basic premise behind my posts here calling for new thinking is that I totally agree: a skill-based movement mechanic would be a very good thing for the long term survival of NS2. Yes, we might be a little late to the party, but that shouldn't stop us from trying. We have a great opportunity now to develop something innovative - that can only be a good thing IMHO.
Skulks are naturally stronger in cramped spaces and weaker in open ground regardless of the movement options. By disabling the basic movement options on open ground, you're limiting skulk quite strictly to proximity of walls everywhere. That sounds like a very limited setup for a lifeform you'll be playing most of your alien gameplay.
I'm all for allowing skulk to use walls and ceiling in more versatile ways, but I think it's vital that skulk has a good set of tools regardless of their proximity.
I am sure you said bunnyhop somewhere, which includes a lot of keys.
Naturally any movement which can manage to still be hard to master with less keys would do better.
Yes. There's bhop in it. We can discuss about strafejumping and such as viable easier alternatives too, but that wasn't the point of my suggestion.
While accellerating with bhop requires a lot of keys, preserving speed doesn't necessary require anything more than timing your jumps (which is ridiculously easy with Q3 jumping). The idea of dash is that you're given that good starting speed that you can preserve and you don't have to go to the dreaded mouse & keyboard dance unless you really want to get every little bit out of your skulk. For your average public game skulking, the dash alone should more than sufficient source of speed and acceleration.
And if you want to start maxing out the movement skills, you already have a good start because it can all be slowly built on top of the already working routine of dash jumping and its speed preservation.
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If you still have NS1 around, you can probably try something similar by doing a leap or blink in Tram Tunnel in NS_Bast and try to preserve it by jumping. NS1 doesn't have the Q3 pogo jump, so you might want to bind your jump to mouse wheel or use a 3jump script though.
NS1 requires you to strafe if you want to preserve the speed in turns, but I think some NS2 implementations made that easier already too.
In NS1 we had circle jumping as a sort of mini leap for use in combat and it's actually doable with the new movement code, but it not near powerful enough to be useful. Mostly due to the ground friction being too high ("zomg ice skating!" :eyeroll:).
As Cory said, the official word is: Assume most of it is going in Vanilla NS2. Feedback from both players and the Balance Mod Tournament will help decide what, when and if things move over to Vanilla.
But of course there is always a chance it might not happen at all, but it's unlikely unless big problems are found.
still unsure if your suggestion would be a fix for the issue I am having. (and other are bound to have, i doubt im alone)
Continues fingermovement in a repeating patern with multiple keys. (strafeL & strafeR, jump, forward) while being 'only' 4 keys are very hard to keep using in the correct sequence for long durations for folk like me who simply do not have the motor skills to do so. It will go from LJRJLJRJ to stuff like LLJRJL or LJJRRJ or stuf being much more bad. Practise will do little to help in this problem. (practise makes me only able to do it untill it breaks but never in long sequence, unfortunately)
As you still need to use those keys to maintain speed, its not a fix. If I misunderstood and we actually do use less keys then it may work better.
thats the problem obraxis, thats not the only official word. between hugh and cory, either someone is being dishonest or someone has been lied to - or UWE doesnt know whats happening with its own game. regardless, this whole thing stinks.
*this post goes super off topic* - also at the l4d videos you show about visceral, he's on my F/L and just came back like two weeks ago and seems to be playing dota 2 after a year+ of being offline, if you want me to ask him questions about how the hunter works or something I'd be glad to do so; possibly he can offer insight and maybe we can test something out with leap?
They weren't advertised, you look at the next call of crap and tell me how many ads you see for it; heck I don't even care about the game and I already know it's coming out
There's posters
There's ads all over the internet
People are talking about it
It's literally sometimes a trending topic on twitter
The amount of ad revenue going into such a thing has a huge impact whether you like to think so or not, of course games spread easily via WOM (terraria) I mean I made half of my friends list get that game and none of them regretted it; I also have a lot of people on my F/L who own ns2 but do not currently play it, the complaints are the same via performance and one of them was upset that there was no skill based movement, the few of them I notified recently that there's a possibility skill based movement will return interested both of them
Warsow atm is on steam greenlight attempting to release as a F2P title, I believe if it came out as F2P and somehow made the mainpage of steam it could attract a massive amount of players, however I don't think warsow features the nice skill matching that something like quake live has; because when you join a server and QL tells you the person is above your skill level, it damn means it (not saying you won't win the duel) but whatever they use to track the skills is properly working because you get a nice competitive match most of the time
Anyway, the movement seems to be changing weekly and while it makes me slightly upset because I think the variations we had a while ago felt much better (especially the one with strafing being a more important factor) that seemed to be removed as of now and I'm really hoping it wasn't because one to three people spoke out about it when barely the entire community has touched upon it (and most I've seen who have really enjoyed it) just seems like the -no offense- ones who can't do it, complain about it
It's like accepting that battlefield 3 is an awful game, it handicaps a skilled player so much that you can barely tell the difference between a professional twitch gamer to the average pubstar; because it's as simple as holding M1 and being the "first person who shot" styled-type games which really ruins gaming
going even more off-topic it made me really upset what they turned TF2 into, sure it can still be played competitive but if you're not doing a scrim or a match, and just a general pug or public it's going to feel like shit with all the new random weapons amongst other garbage, game felt like a quality slow-paced teamwork twitch fps way back when, it's the same but it's not
also, stop trying to force your opinions on others as if they were some objective truth - they arent, they're just your opinion. btw, if you hate tf2 so much, go play FortressForever, you can concboost to you hearts content, along with the other 17 players.
huge emphasis on skillbased gameplay at the detriment of everything else and throwing money at a game will not work - look at the CPL world tour - they took an extremely skillful (but not particularly popular) game - Painkiller, threw shitloads of money at it with coverage and big prizes - it flopped. the same is happening with Shootmania.
anyway, UWE have apparently gone into bunker mode on this.
From that point on you can work it further if you want and mix in small bits of bhop elements (way easier than learning bhop straight away, I think), but it's not expected or necessary for your average gamer by any means. You don't need to use any bhop to get good use out of the dash. Probably most people will have enough challenge in mastering the speed/predictability tradeoff and aiming their dashes.
Also, I don't think I really learned bhop as a strictly mechanical pattern and I'm not sure if I could even do that, but that's probably a different story.
PS. L4D do have really basic BH, and in L4D2 it plays a role, without it jockey and boomer would be much worse lifeforms.
how do you intend to quantify this outcry? will it be before or after? will it be based purely on these forums, or will you run a poll ingame to try and reach the maximum amount of players? I ask because you cannot possibly measure the outcry or lack of until you inform the entire player base of said changes. Seeing as even now we only have a 'confirmed denial' i wouldnt say that these plans have been effectively communicated to the community. to assume there is little or no outcry on these pretences seems to be a bit premature.
You can have some degree of predictability to the movement mechanic with it still being fulfilling and deep. Otherwise, the 'effectively no air friction' skulking we had in previous builds would be considered superior to the more predictable bhop.
Those that are still actively playing NS2 and giving their feedback on these forums are the ones who will be giving input.
Yes, its a sample bias.. but its also their hardcore fans and followers that helped shape this game in the first place over the years of open development and feedback.
This really is just the next step for NS2... 2.0 if you will.
Sure you could email everyone on the NS2 mailing list.. and they in fact may do this.. and sure those players might have an opinion on the matter.. and yes it may even be better than a vet's.
There's no method to contact every single NS2 customer though afiak
But they aren't around playing anymore or contributing anymore.. so i have a hard time seeing why they should be catered to, or worse, halt progress for the active base that is still contributing to get the game out of it that they so love?
I think the phrase "You decide your own level of involvement" is accurate in this case.
Good thing there's plenty of avenues in which to share your view here (in a civil manner, though, please) where the developers will be listening.
Honestly, the worst thing they could do with NS2 is to just leave it as is, or only tweak small balance items. That's basically just giving up on the game, there's 0 chance for the playerbase to grow or the game depth to increase, and it will just keep bleeding players like it is now.
I still think UWE should raise awareness with a notice of proposed changes in the menu when you open the game. You already got a news feed in there why not put the proposed changes and leave a text box for feedback. Or even a poll to go with it? Google moderator was useful in determining the features players wanted most but that was shut down. We never even got an answer as to why it was closed and it provided decent feedback from hundreds of players. So what impression does this give? It just seems unnecessarily risky when you can implement the tools to get a generalized option on how good percentage of the players feel about certain changes using the in game menu.
if you look at the people posting in this thread, you will notice that a vast majority are repeat posters (guilty ^^) who have membership dating from before 31-10-2012 - the games launch date. since then the game has sold more than 400,000 copies, 144,000 in the first week alone! while i dont mean to say that each of these 400,000 are anywhere near as committed to NS2 as some, the vast majority naturally dont play anymore, but if you ask me, the future of Natural Selection as a franchise lies much more in the 400,000 than the tiny smattering of 'Agrees' on any post in this forum. I am extremely hopeful and almost assume that NS2 will not be the last installment in the series. thats my future of NS - not an NS2 mod that some hope to play for the next 10 years.
The best option is an in-game feedback system. Maybe have a section in the menu for players to provide feedback that is sent to a database. You could even allow the option to include your system specs, include a log/screenshot/video. Other than that, Reddit and the Steam forums are pretty good places to get more player feedback.
At least this is the only thing that is currently keeping me interested in playing.
What is your solution then?
Wrong. History is against you
NS1 had growth from 1.04 -> 2.0 -> 3.0
I'm not saying that BT mod -> live will be successful, but there are a large amount of players that I know that this mod has rekindled their interest in the game. They are waiting for it to be released
PS: What happens if x amount of people leave, but z amount of people come back to the game because of the changes. That is what I predict will happen... z > x
Or it may actually get bigger again? Why exactly will it necessarily get smaller?
I for one am waiting for the mod to get released, and I would actively start playing again if it did.
Granted many people who quit playing probably did so because of performance, but I'm sure there's quite a lot of players out there who simply got bored with it and wouldn't mind a big overhaul. If said overhaul even makes the game more accessible on some levels (skulk play, alien scaling, bigger comeback potential) then it could additionally go a long way for player retention rates as well.
Just turn the implementation of the BT mod's biggest changes into a PR event with some fancy new weapon or features smacked on top to get even more attention.
We have plans to promote the mod through the official channels, soon. Sewlek has been working towards finalizing the features, and then we can put it into the final phase of testing and get the word out to more people through blog posts, twitter feed, in game news, etc, to let them know that this could be the future of NS2 and to start playing and giving feedback if they want to have a say.
Feedback can be given on the forums - Sewlek has been reading every single post in those threads. It can be given in game - Sewlek is constantly playing on BT mod servers and watching and listening to player experiences. There is an upcoming BT tournament that teams are participating in, and we will be watching those and listening to the players opinions. There are and will be plenty of arguments for and against various features in the mod, and of course we won't please everyone with the changes. But we will listen, and, based on all the feedback we receive from all areas of the community, as well as our own judgement about what we feel is best for the future of NS2, we will make the final decisions about which elements to carry over from the mod into the game.
But people need to remember that how you present your opinions is as important as what they are. "OMG this mod sux and is going to kill NS2" is the kind of presentation of an opinion that does little to contribute to the ongoing discussion, and will likely result in those opinions being ignored. "I don't like ___ feature , because of ____ and ____ " is the sort of feedback we are looking for and that will matter.
Maybe you'd start actively playing again, if the BT mod became live with all/most of it's changes right now I'd probably quit.