I have played the BT mod only recently and have about 10 games under my belt now as aliens and marines. What i have noticed on aliens is the Alien Kham can REALLY mess up your experience much more than before. I dont know why there is a trend of getting 3 hives fast with no upgrades or only building one upgrade chamber when it takes a max of three to make it full strength. The player from vanilla jumps in and gets carapace as they are used to doing not realizing it is only lv one and the Khamm never drops more. They see three hives built but are still getting spanked. Not understanding the Khamm is at fault here they think it is the mod.
I have friends who had this exact experience and reaction to BT mod. I have a extended background in NS1, so it was second nature to me to adapt back to what i was used to for years. People who are fresh from NS2 wont understand right away no matter how many tutorial menus or graphics on their screen depicting 3 upgrade in various ratios of shaded and filled in icons.
Nothing is being forced on you. The game has flaws and UWE is attempting to fix them. I think calling this experiment a Mod and then announcing it is Swelek's baby was a mistake imo. It felt like it wasnt back by UWE and just Swelek messing around. Then all of a sudden it is becoming vanilla. There was even confusion internally in UWE on whether or not this Mod would become standard NS2. Even when directly asked UWE ducked and dodged giving no firm answers, coping out saying some stuff would be included but everything could be reversed if it received enough negative feedback. Much like with announcing deadlines, i think UWE could have handled this entire process much better, but live and learn. I am no expert and can only poke at the past with the unfair knowledge on how things went.
^ - odd. my impression from all public UWE announcements was UWE was dedicating a resource wholly to developing&playtesting concepts to make the game better. No 'all of the sudden' here. The BT mod was always a testbed for ideas that could move into vanilla - some would pan out & some would not. This seems to be an improvement over the previous situation where there was no public testing of upcoming vanilla changes & the balancer had many other responsibilities to deal with as well.
^ - odd. my impression from all public UWE announcements was UWE was dedicating a resource wholly to developing&playtesting concepts to make the game better. No 'all of the sudden' here. The BT mod was always a testbed for ideas that could move into vanilla - some would pan out & some would not. This seems to be an improvement over the previous situation where there was no public testing of upcoming vanilla changes & the balancer had many other responsibilities to deal with as well.
What i am referring to is posts made by different members of the UWE team in the forums that directing contradicted one another. To be fair there was only one instance but it seemed from previous posts by a certain person that BT mod would remain as such and only select (maybe 1-2) ideas would be pulled from it. As i said, even when we did get an official response (and by official, i mean from someone who actually makes decisions) it was still very obscure and not straight forward. Then BAM! BT Mod is 250. This is all from my personal observations mind you. I am on the forums semi regularly but i miss much
I think one of the biggest problem was calling it the "balance test" mod. But I guess it's too late now to change that. In any case, it's how they handle the actual release that's really important to keep them from alienating casual players too much. I hope they have a good in game new post prepped along with a video explaining the biggest changes, and most importantly their reasoning behind it.
Especially the movement changes will need to be communicated as best as possible, as it's the first thing people will notice when joining the alien team and it can make or break their first impressions. Knowing what to do and being able to pick up the basics of the new movement system within the first hour of play makes for a much more enjoyable experience than fumbling around because of not knowing what to do in order to move around efficiently.
Yes, one could think it won't be too hard for players to pick up the new skulk movement, as it's still mainly walljumping, but after seeing Hugh's playtest videos it seemed to me the subtleties of skulk movement (press jump while glancing the wall and making smooth mouse movements, don't jump straight at a wall and flick off) might need to be made very clear indeed.
I think calling this experiment a Mod and then announcing it is Swelek's baby was a mistake imo. It felt like it wasnt back by UWE and just Swelek messing around. Then all of a sudden it is becoming vanilla.
Fully agree. My impression from the changelogs was that the BT Mod was the "anything goes" sandbox for new ideas... a first proving ground to find out which ideas might work at all. I also assumed that the most mature ideas would move into the standard game step by step, maybe via beta versions (like 249) for final balance tweaking.
The announcement that it might become the new vanilla was... a surprise, to say the least. Even though I like many of the individual changes.
I just completely destroyed a pub with fade. The fade bunnyhop speeds are insane, much faster than skulk and almost feels like proper bhoping where I can make some big movements without sacrificing speed. Add blink in, no more glancing blows and you have a killing machine. Added bonus is you don't need carapace just to engage a pack of marines for fade anymore as movement is much more fluid, you can survive using regen and poke marines relatively safely. You also don't have to wait for the comm to research blink. Good times.
Learning curve of BT mod is going to be huge for alot of players...
I just completely destroyed a pub with fade. The fade bunnyhop speeds are insane, much faster than skulk and almost feels like proper bhoping where I can make some big movements without sacrificing speed. Add blink in, no more glancing blows and you have a killing machine. Added bonus is you don't need carapace just to engage a pack of marines for fade anymore as movement is much more fluid, you can survive using regen and poke marines relatively safely. You also don't have to wait for the comm to research blink. Good times.
Learning curve of BT mod is going to be huge for alot of players...
That is the problem. The Mod helps competetive game but not the publics. in publics the marines are not so well organized like in clanwars. but the mod is based on the skill players and skill games. marines in publics will really suffer with this mod.......
MASSIVE KHAM CHANGES, LOADS OF OPTIONS... ...and yet. Yet I wonder, are any of those going to be used? Will I not find myself ever thinking "whoah, this ability is pretty cool, 10 res, neat, I can... ...wait, shouldn't I just get my team the optimal upgrades and then lifeforms? Hmm."
I just completely destroyed a pub with fade. The fade bunnyhop speeds are insane, much faster than skulk and almost feels like proper bhoping where I can make some big movements without sacrificing speed. Add blink in, no more glancing blows and you have a killing machine. Added bonus is you don't need carapace just to engage a pack of marines for fade anymore as movement is much more fluid, you can survive using regen and poke marines relatively safely. You also don't have to wait for the comm to research blink. Good times.
Learning curve of BT mod is going to be huge for alot of players...
That is the problem. The Mod helps competetive game but not the publics. in publics the marines are not so well organized like in clanwars. but the mod is based on the skill players and skill games. marines in publics will really suffer with this mod.......
@Rammler
I have to disagree with your assessment about marines having a harder time. Whilst it might be true, there is more emphasis on skill (marine aim and alien movement) the marines are buffed by larger bullet projectiles. Then there is also the proto lab change where 1 base marines can get Jps. 1 base marine on jp/sg or jp/gl is rocking atm because whips don't whack grenades, so a team of 3 jp (2 sg 1 gl) can really really put on the pain for alien hive location.
Surprise surprise, apart from the Onos nurfing, this mod appears heavily favored towards the Aliens.
Obviously i won't know until i play the final version but on paper this mod sounds awful.
Please keep commenting on a mod you appear to not have played. I look forward to you insightful comments
edit: Isn't it funny the guys that agree with these retarded posts are the same ones hating on BT. Even if you don't like BT, surely you wouldn't agree with the comments of someone who has only read a changelog and not played it.
I think Devs need to change their screen resolution, change their settings ( get away from their "tweaked comfortable gaming settings", join a public server and play from a beginners point of view.
Comments
I have friends who had this exact experience and reaction to BT mod. I have a extended background in NS1, so it was second nature to me to adapt back to what i was used to for years. People who are fresh from NS2 wont understand right away no matter how many tutorial menus or graphics on their screen depicting 3 upgrade in various ratios of shaded and filled in icons.
Nothing is being forced on you. The game has flaws and UWE is attempting to fix them. I think calling this experiment a Mod and then announcing it is Swelek's baby was a mistake imo. It felt like it wasnt back by UWE and just Swelek messing around. Then all of a sudden it is becoming vanilla. There was even confusion internally in UWE on whether or not this Mod would become standard NS2. Even when directly asked UWE ducked and dodged giving no firm answers, coping out saying some stuff would be included but everything could be reversed if it received enough negative feedback. Much like with announcing deadlines, i think UWE could have handled this entire process much better, but live and learn. I am no expert and can only poke at the past with the unfair knowledge on how things went.
What i am referring to is posts made by different members of the UWE team in the forums that directing contradicted one another. To be fair there was only one instance but it seemed from previous posts by a certain person that BT mod would remain as such and only select (maybe 1-2) ideas would be pulled from it. As i said, even when we did get an official response (and by official, i mean from someone who actually makes decisions) it was still very obscure and not straight forward. Then BAM! BT Mod is 250. This is all from my personal observations mind you. I am on the forums semi regularly but i miss much
Especially the movement changes will need to be communicated as best as possible, as it's the first thing people will notice when joining the alien team and it can make or break their first impressions. Knowing what to do and being able to pick up the basics of the new movement system within the first hour of play makes for a much more enjoyable experience than fumbling around because of not knowing what to do in order to move around efficiently.
Yes, one could think it won't be too hard for players to pick up the new skulk movement, as it's still mainly walljumping, but after seeing Hugh's playtest videos it seemed to me the subtleties of skulk movement (press jump while glancing the wall and making smooth mouse movements, don't jump straight at a wall and flick off) might need to be made very clear indeed.
The announcement that it might become the new vanilla was... a surprise, to say the least. Even though I like many of the individual changes.
Learning curve of BT mod is going to be huge for alot of players...
That is the problem. The Mod helps competetive game but not the publics. in publics the marines are not so well organized like in clanwars. but the mod is based on the skill players and skill games. marines in publics will really suffer with this mod.......
Obviously i won't know until i play the final version but on paper this mod sounds awful.
Hopefully I won't.
@Rammler
I have to disagree with your assessment about marines having a harder time. Whilst it might be true, there is more emphasis on skill (marine aim and alien movement) the marines are buffed by larger bullet projectiles. Then there is also the proto lab change where 1 base marines can get Jps. 1 base marine on jp/sg or jp/gl is rocking atm because whips don't whack grenades, so a team of 3 jp (2 sg 1 gl) can really really put on the pain for alien hive location.
Please keep commenting on a mod you appear to not have played. I look forward to you insightful comments
edit: Isn't it funny the guys that agree with these retarded posts are the same ones hating on BT. Even if you don't like BT, surely you wouldn't agree with the comments of someone who has only read a changelog and not played it.
Stop ruining the world.