Thoughts of a returning player.
salvadorjer
Join Date: 2012-10-22 Member: 163138Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2012-10-22 Member: 163138Members, Reinforced - Shadow
The scene: an enthusiatic player who was awed by the beta info and bought the game day 1. His computer was a laptop. Not a good one. The fps was around 30 in the menu at the lowest resolution but he still played over 80 hours because of how amazing he thought the game was. However he quit due to moving oversees to an area with shoddy internet and the performance pains finally got to him.
The action: a new alienware laptop, a return 6 months after leaving. Playing untill the wee (or honestly not so wee) hours of the morning.
thoughts as they come to me in my post-game sleep-deprived manner:
-Tiny playerbase. This saddens me to no small extent but it is not caused by the steep learning curve as much as the performance. It was pretty rough slugging through crappy framerates before and while great leaps have been taken, the game still falls short in that domain. The basic logic is that the lower the computer specs required, the larger the pool of potential players.
-Onto the learning curve. The tutorial videos on death seem relevant but have a couple of issues imho. The first is that they seem to be on a set track and thus may become irrelevant to someone just learning the concepts. When the game talks to me about flamers and exo's when we are in the shotgun research phase there is no way a new player will keep the tips in mind. Additionally, i feel like it would be nice to have a video viewer available in the menu so people can actually look some of that stuff up and not hope they see what they need the next time they die.
-learning curve cont. An option to open the menu while the game is loading (you all know the shaders/precaching phase) would be nice for people who just started the game and want to take a look at their keybindings/want to rebind something but didn't have the time to the previous round. And on the subject of keybindings, unless i am highy mistaken is there no way to rebind commander hotkeys? (azerty keyboard here but the tabs are still showing up like if they were designed for qwerty).
-the shotgun. Yeah you all knew this one was coming. Well now that my fps can be counted using more than the fingers on my hands i have found the value of this item to have substatially increased in my eyes.:D That said, all other guns seem to fill a specialist role wheras the shotgun really is a pure upgrade. While logically it may be justifiable since the LMG is free i am partial to having a side-grade idea that i saw bouncing around the forums. This idea is that you LMG is the gun you always have access to and the others are ones you can carry at the same time and switch to given the circumstances/loadout of other marines in your vacinity. So you might have lmg+pistol for free and then have lmg+GL for the gl cost or lmg+flamethrower for the flamethrower cost. This would allow the shotgun to be viable as a redesigned specific side-grade.
-respawning and rescources. Is it my imagination or am i losing rescources every time i respawn? Not entirely sure on that.
-I still love this game gratz UWE. Just wanted to put that in there.
-early onos. My favorite strategy as alien comm was be minimal on upgrades and cysts saving for a 2nd hive early onos. Hower the removal of that as an option I feel has made for more interesting games with a true variety of lifeforms in the fray as opposed to onos's, skuls waiting to be an onos, and that one random lerk. So while this surprised me, i feel it is for the best.
-I should mention so far i only play pub (and will stay that way until i get a better net connection and more free time).
-all things gorgeous. Gorge tunnels are a really nice addition to the game i feel. (and while i'm on the subject the phase gate/gorge tunnel trajectory on map is a great plus) I don't feel the players (since it's player spawned) have learned to place several in the same area withought it being confusing as to which one to take. That should solve itself over time though it'll be another hurdle for beginners. Babblers, they are fun to use but i remain dubious as to their actual offensive potential. as far as i can tell, a gorge usually has better things to be doing than messing with babblers. Maybe if there was a mode where they required less micro-management (and be weaker) they would seem more useful and the babblers could enter a frenzy (normal power) when following the bait. This i feel would lower the skill floor withought affecting the skill ceiling.
-mods auto-downloading. Can't say i played modded servers beforehand but this is full of awesomeness.
-performance. The fact that i needed to get a new computer to realistically run the game kind of speaks for itself. (1 my comp was s**t and 2 this game is still a real hog)
-playing on eu servers atm i found the french and german communitites to be far more fun to play with than the english for some reason (when a side starts to lose the english speakers often begin to play the blame game followed by throwing internet feces at each other).
-I'm reading the balance thread and i find it very interesting. However from an outside view (not so much when you are doing it youself but just when someone sees it) everyone jumping all the time just looks dumb. I get the whole maximizing the skill ceiling and it might be for the best but to the casual observer, it's pretty immersion breaking to see the marines turn into human jumping beans. This may be irreconcileable but this is my thread on my thoughts so here they are.
-Welders. This might work with the tutorial video segmenets but there has to be a way to emphasise to new players that welders repair (fairly obvious) AND highly speed up constuction (not obvious).
That's all for now, i'm glad to be back to good ns2. Now to go bite some ankles.
Edit: typos, but there are sure to be more.
The action: a new alienware laptop, a return 6 months after leaving. Playing untill the wee (or honestly not so wee) hours of the morning.
thoughts as they come to me in my post-game sleep-deprived manner:
-Tiny playerbase. This saddens me to no small extent but it is not caused by the steep learning curve as much as the performance. It was pretty rough slugging through crappy framerates before and while great leaps have been taken, the game still falls short in that domain. The basic logic is that the lower the computer specs required, the larger the pool of potential players.
-Onto the learning curve. The tutorial videos on death seem relevant but have a couple of issues imho. The first is that they seem to be on a set track and thus may become irrelevant to someone just learning the concepts. When the game talks to me about flamers and exo's when we are in the shotgun research phase there is no way a new player will keep the tips in mind. Additionally, i feel like it would be nice to have a video viewer available in the menu so people can actually look some of that stuff up and not hope they see what they need the next time they die.
-learning curve cont. An option to open the menu while the game is loading (you all know the shaders/precaching phase) would be nice for people who just started the game and want to take a look at their keybindings/want to rebind something but didn't have the time to the previous round. And on the subject of keybindings, unless i am highy mistaken is there no way to rebind commander hotkeys? (azerty keyboard here but the tabs are still showing up like if they were designed for qwerty).
-the shotgun. Yeah you all knew this one was coming. Well now that my fps can be counted using more than the fingers on my hands i have found the value of this item to have substatially increased in my eyes.:D That said, all other guns seem to fill a specialist role wheras the shotgun really is a pure upgrade. While logically it may be justifiable since the LMG is free i am partial to having a side-grade idea that i saw bouncing around the forums. This idea is that you LMG is the gun you always have access to and the others are ones you can carry at the same time and switch to given the circumstances/loadout of other marines in your vacinity. So you might have lmg+pistol for free and then have lmg+GL for the gl cost or lmg+flamethrower for the flamethrower cost. This would allow the shotgun to be viable as a redesigned specific side-grade.
-respawning and rescources. Is it my imagination or am i losing rescources every time i respawn? Not entirely sure on that.
-I still love this game gratz UWE. Just wanted to put that in there.
-early onos. My favorite strategy as alien comm was be minimal on upgrades and cysts saving for a 2nd hive early onos. Hower the removal of that as an option I feel has made for more interesting games with a true variety of lifeforms in the fray as opposed to onos's, skuls waiting to be an onos, and that one random lerk. So while this surprised me, i feel it is for the best.
-I should mention so far i only play pub (and will stay that way until i get a better net connection and more free time).
-all things gorgeous. Gorge tunnels are a really nice addition to the game i feel. (and while i'm on the subject the phase gate/gorge tunnel trajectory on map is a great plus) I don't feel the players (since it's player spawned) have learned to place several in the same area withought it being confusing as to which one to take. That should solve itself over time though it'll be another hurdle for beginners. Babblers, they are fun to use but i remain dubious as to their actual offensive potential. as far as i can tell, a gorge usually has better things to be doing than messing with babblers. Maybe if there was a mode where they required less micro-management (and be weaker) they would seem more useful and the babblers could enter a frenzy (normal power) when following the bait. This i feel would lower the skill floor withought affecting the skill ceiling.
-mods auto-downloading. Can't say i played modded servers beforehand but this is full of awesomeness.
-performance. The fact that i needed to get a new computer to realistically run the game kind of speaks for itself. (1 my comp was s**t and 2 this game is still a real hog)
-playing on eu servers atm i found the french and german communitites to be far more fun to play with than the english for some reason (when a side starts to lose the english speakers often begin to play the blame game followed by throwing internet feces at each other).
-I'm reading the balance thread and i find it very interesting. However from an outside view (not so much when you are doing it youself but just when someone sees it) everyone jumping all the time just looks dumb. I get the whole maximizing the skill ceiling and it might be for the best but to the casual observer, it's pretty immersion breaking to see the marines turn into human jumping beans. This may be irreconcileable but this is my thread on my thoughts so here they are.
-Welders. This might work with the tutorial video segmenets but there has to be a way to emphasise to new players that welders repair (fairly obvious) AND highly speed up constuction (not obvious).
That's all for now, i'm glad to be back to good ns2. Now to go bite some ankles.
Edit: typos, but there are sure to be more.
Comments
Also, welders don't TECHNICALLY speed up build times, just gains health at a faster rate that simply building it.
Actually, they do. It's hardly noticeable, but take a stopwatch and you'll see the difference. It's somewhere between 7-13%.
Based on the actual game code, welding shouldn't build it faster (it just repairs at the same time it builds, so the building will get to 100% health faster).
If there is an actual difference in practice, I suspect it's a bug.
Well that's strange. I've tested this in-game a lot and always got differing results. Could it be that there's a half-a-second delay before the build tool starts building after you press E, but the welder starts immediately if you have it equipped?
Also could someone confirm some of the questions i had? Namely welders, respawn cost/rescource drain and rebinding commander keys?
- You can't rebind commander keys at the moment. Yes, it can be quite annoying for azerty users.
Also, babblers are most useful as an armor boost, and often underused in this regard. You know you can stick babblers on aliens by throwing the bait ball at them (or bounce it off a wall into yourself)?