New Player Experience / First Impressions
Skulldoor
Join Date: 2014-07-29 Member: 197681Members
Join Date: 2014-07-29 Member: 197681Members
Hello there!
I'm just coming off my first experience with NS2 and I thought the forums would be a fantastic place to tell the tale of my first play session to both give prospective players an idea of what to expect and remind experienced players just what it's like to be new. I warn you now, I don't know much about this game. I know how to shoot, I know how to bite some ankles and... Not a whole lot more than that. Yes, I did do the tutorial from front to back and watched all the supplemental videos. Unfortunately, there were a few weeks of time between when I did all the tutorial things and when I actually played the game but I'm not new to gaming so I figured I could suss out what to do (kinda) without needing to do the tutorials again.
Starting off, I grabbed a friend of mine (I bought the game in a four pack and gave him a copy) and we went into the first server that had a decent number of players (15 or so), had a low ping (40ish) and was rookie friendly (supposedly). We decided that as long as the people were friendly, we'd stick with the server and have a good time. We started out by playing marines (since it's far less complicated), picked up our rifles, and merrily trotted off to the meat grinder. Needless to say, it wasn't pretty. I kept hearing people complaining about the commander but I didn't care too hard. Maybe he wasn't upgrading us, maybe he wasn't doing whatever it is he's supposed to be doing, all I know is I couldn't find one of those health/ammo refrigerators so I'd sacrifice myself to one of the many wandering dogs to get new ammo and health (on the rare occasions that I'd actually survive an encounter with said dogs). I didn't kill much, I didn't really have to, we were utterly torn apart by a variety of nasty things and the match was surrendered before too terribly long. Did we have a good time? Absolutely! The people were in good spirits (except for the commander shaming) and there was even a few folks who were treating us to singing in the waiting room while the next match got going.
For the second match, we decided that getting our faces eaten off wasn't exactly a grand time so we decided to choose the face eaters themselves. Oddly, rather than having a commander barking orders in my ears, I was put into what appeared to be a dog's mouth, put on some pulsating moss, and told to have a good time. My friend and I merrily trotted down the halls, ran over walls, jumped over railings and then got our nibbly bits splattered all over the walls by big burly men with guns. I decided this must be a fluke, as I couldn't hit the nibbly dog beasts when I was given such a firearm, and ran once more into the shooting gallery with gusto. Apparently, it wasn't a fluke. The big burly men with guns apparently cared little for what I thought to be a difficult target and spent the better part of the match shooting me whenever I'd attack them. This trend, however, changed once someone asked why I wasn't evolving. My conversation about evolving went something like this:
"Errrr... Evolving? What button does that? B? Okay, now what? Click things and hit evolve? Okay... Which one makes me go invisible like you guys? That one? Okay, any other suggestions? Celery? Cool, I have ranch in the fridge. Oh, celerity? Yeah, I can do that. Now what? Armor? Okay"
Thankfully, the other ankle biters were quite friendly and were more than patient in explaining to me that I'd be turned into niblets if I didn't evolve. So, with that in mind, I evolved up, figured out that walking would render me (mostly) invisible, glued myself to the ceiling, and went about on a merry face-rampage. This actually went pretty well! I found out that casually strolling up to a marine, leaping, and biting his face tended to kill him relatively quickly! I died shortly thereafter most of the time but evolving cost me nothing but about 5 or 10 seconds and sometimes (rarely) I'd score a kill and survive to scuttle away into the vents where I could properly giggle about my leaping face mauling skills. Despite my enjoyment, though, apparently I wasn't doing something right because we lost. We lost miserably. The big burly men had upgraded from their rifles and shotguns to grenade launchers and flamethrowers. They even went so far as to put on jetpacks to make my facehugger impersonations difficult. Still, there was singing in the ready room and a good time was had by all. The next match went similarly (we decided to go alien again) and we lost without me getting the ability to go all sneaky-dog and I don't remember if I ever learned how to leap again in the second alien match before we lost.
It was in the next match that we decided we'd had enough fun being face-beasts so back we went to the marine side. Surely we can't lose every match, right? Apparently we could. We were thrown into a pretty snazzy looking place; it had a cafeteria and a bar, too. I think I remember it from the tutorial level. Either way, we were given our rifles, a guy telling us what to do, and sent off. This time, though, I made sure to locate the ammo/health refrigerator once it had been put down (right in the middle of the room where everyone could get to it). From there, I ran out into the corridors to meet my bitey demise alongside a handful of other guys while one individual took it upon himself to (loudly) bemoan the fact that "all the greens are on our side" whereupon I was happy to remind him that if he didn't like rookies, he probably shouldn't have joined a rookie friendly server. He kept complaining for a while but I eventually just tuned him out and fought as well as I could. I didn't do well, mind you, but I've played enough FPS games to know that learning how an opponent might move is a skill that takes time to learn and really didn't mind my 10% accuracy (I think I got it up to 30% by the end of the match, but then again my targets were much larger by that point).
The highlight of that match had to be when I ran out of ammo in the middle of a firefight between a wall of goo with a pig behind it, a big, angry bat, and a handful of wiggly tentacles that threw spikes. I called for ammo and was promptly told by one of my fellow soldiers that asking for ammo makes me more of a hindrance than simply dying. Nonplussed, I called for ammo again only to have the commander yell at me, "No, Skulldoor, ammo's too expensive." Really? Okay, well I guess I'll just use my pistol, then, and call for ammo until he waves his commander wand and gives me some. Needless to say, I didn't get my request, but the team found it very amusing as the commander became more and more irate at being asked for ammo "Oh my god, you're full on ammo, why do you keep asking for ammo?!" "Dude... I need ammo like... Really hardcore badly..." "You're full!" "I need it... So bad..."
The charm wore off as we were losing worse and worse so I stopped, but still, everyone had a good time and we all had a good laugh. He was adamant about not being the commander after that, however, but I still asked him for ammo from time to time. There might have been one or two more matches in there, but everything was pretty much the same. Singing in the ready room followed by my friend and I deciding which team would lose (as that seemed to be the trend). From there, we'd run around, get shot or bitten, and that would be the end of it.
On our last match, though, we joined up with the marines (deciding to weigh them down next) and were once more treated to having a loud individual yelling in our ear. This wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that this particular individual seemed to not realize that he's on a rookie friendly server and decided to take it upon himself to call me out, personally, for what he perceived to be shortcomings in my abilities. One particular instance that sticks in my mind is when I found myself pitted against a dog, a pig, and a big angry bat when I was by myself. I emptied my magazine a few times, got shot by the big angry bat, and decided that simply dying wouldn't be proactive and opted for a tactical flanking maneuver towards the rear. My display of self preservation was quickly met by a litany of profanity and derision from the commander who asserted that I ran from the pig (that he said was by itself) while he gave me health. I informed him that that firstly, I'm very new and did not know he'd focused his attention on me, and secondly, that there was, in fact, an entire barnyard of unpleasantness behind the grumpy pig that he had apparently not noticed. This correction, however, did not seem to sway the commander who spent the rest of the match berating me, questioning my sexuality, and insinuating that I, by merely existing, create a vacuum and the fact that I'd only started playing mere hours before is immaterial.
As before, we lost the match, but in general, the unpleasant person left a sour taste in our mouth and we decided that it would be best to simply stop for the day.
So, in general, we lost every match. Every. Single. Match. On the other hand, we did have a very good time losing and will probably join up and lose more later. My only suggestion to those reading this is... Really, don't take this game too terribly seriously, especially if you're on a server that specifically says it's rookie friendly. You're going to have very new players running around who have no clue what they're doing (like me!) and, while I accept that I'm not the best player in the world (And pretty poor when it comes to NS2 specifically. For the time being.) that's no reason to hurl epithets at me or at anyone else for that matter. We're here to have fun. Chill out and let everyone have fun.
If you're still here, thanks for reading everything. I know it's not exactly a productive post but hey, this is the new player forum, maybe this will remind everyone what it's like to be new and give someone new an idea of what to expect.
Good Hunting / Good Face Chewing (to whichever side you root for).
I'm just coming off my first experience with NS2 and I thought the forums would be a fantastic place to tell the tale of my first play session to both give prospective players an idea of what to expect and remind experienced players just what it's like to be new. I warn you now, I don't know much about this game. I know how to shoot, I know how to bite some ankles and... Not a whole lot more than that. Yes, I did do the tutorial from front to back and watched all the supplemental videos. Unfortunately, there were a few weeks of time between when I did all the tutorial things and when I actually played the game but I'm not new to gaming so I figured I could suss out what to do (kinda) without needing to do the tutorials again.
Starting off, I grabbed a friend of mine (I bought the game in a four pack and gave him a copy) and we went into the first server that had a decent number of players (15 or so), had a low ping (40ish) and was rookie friendly (supposedly). We decided that as long as the people were friendly, we'd stick with the server and have a good time. We started out by playing marines (since it's far less complicated), picked up our rifles, and merrily trotted off to the meat grinder. Needless to say, it wasn't pretty. I kept hearing people complaining about the commander but I didn't care too hard. Maybe he wasn't upgrading us, maybe he wasn't doing whatever it is he's supposed to be doing, all I know is I couldn't find one of those health/ammo refrigerators so I'd sacrifice myself to one of the many wandering dogs to get new ammo and health (on the rare occasions that I'd actually survive an encounter with said dogs). I didn't kill much, I didn't really have to, we were utterly torn apart by a variety of nasty things and the match was surrendered before too terribly long. Did we have a good time? Absolutely! The people were in good spirits (except for the commander shaming) and there was even a few folks who were treating us to singing in the waiting room while the next match got going.
For the second match, we decided that getting our faces eaten off wasn't exactly a grand time so we decided to choose the face eaters themselves. Oddly, rather than having a commander barking orders in my ears, I was put into what appeared to be a dog's mouth, put on some pulsating moss, and told to have a good time. My friend and I merrily trotted down the halls, ran over walls, jumped over railings and then got our nibbly bits splattered all over the walls by big burly men with guns. I decided this must be a fluke, as I couldn't hit the nibbly dog beasts when I was given such a firearm, and ran once more into the shooting gallery with gusto. Apparently, it wasn't a fluke. The big burly men with guns apparently cared little for what I thought to be a difficult target and spent the better part of the match shooting me whenever I'd attack them. This trend, however, changed once someone asked why I wasn't evolving. My conversation about evolving went something like this:
"Errrr... Evolving? What button does that? B? Okay, now what? Click things and hit evolve? Okay... Which one makes me go invisible like you guys? That one? Okay, any other suggestions? Celery? Cool, I have ranch in the fridge. Oh, celerity? Yeah, I can do that. Now what? Armor? Okay"
Thankfully, the other ankle biters were quite friendly and were more than patient in explaining to me that I'd be turned into niblets if I didn't evolve. So, with that in mind, I evolved up, figured out that walking would render me (mostly) invisible, glued myself to the ceiling, and went about on a merry face-rampage. This actually went pretty well! I found out that casually strolling up to a marine, leaping, and biting his face tended to kill him relatively quickly! I died shortly thereafter most of the time but evolving cost me nothing but about 5 or 10 seconds and sometimes (rarely) I'd score a kill and survive to scuttle away into the vents where I could properly giggle about my leaping face mauling skills. Despite my enjoyment, though, apparently I wasn't doing something right because we lost. We lost miserably. The big burly men had upgraded from their rifles and shotguns to grenade launchers and flamethrowers. They even went so far as to put on jetpacks to make my facehugger impersonations difficult. Still, there was singing in the ready room and a good time was had by all. The next match went similarly (we decided to go alien again) and we lost without me getting the ability to go all sneaky-dog and I don't remember if I ever learned how to leap again in the second alien match before we lost.
It was in the next match that we decided we'd had enough fun being face-beasts so back we went to the marine side. Surely we can't lose every match, right? Apparently we could. We were thrown into a pretty snazzy looking place; it had a cafeteria and a bar, too. I think I remember it from the tutorial level. Either way, we were given our rifles, a guy telling us what to do, and sent off. This time, though, I made sure to locate the ammo/health refrigerator once it had been put down (right in the middle of the room where everyone could get to it). From there, I ran out into the corridors to meet my bitey demise alongside a handful of other guys while one individual took it upon himself to (loudly) bemoan the fact that "all the greens are on our side" whereupon I was happy to remind him that if he didn't like rookies, he probably shouldn't have joined a rookie friendly server. He kept complaining for a while but I eventually just tuned him out and fought as well as I could. I didn't do well, mind you, but I've played enough FPS games to know that learning how an opponent might move is a skill that takes time to learn and really didn't mind my 10% accuracy (I think I got it up to 30% by the end of the match, but then again my targets were much larger by that point).
The highlight of that match had to be when I ran out of ammo in the middle of a firefight between a wall of goo with a pig behind it, a big, angry bat, and a handful of wiggly tentacles that threw spikes. I called for ammo and was promptly told by one of my fellow soldiers that asking for ammo makes me more of a hindrance than simply dying. Nonplussed, I called for ammo again only to have the commander yell at me, "No, Skulldoor, ammo's too expensive." Really? Okay, well I guess I'll just use my pistol, then, and call for ammo until he waves his commander wand and gives me some. Needless to say, I didn't get my request, but the team found it very amusing as the commander became more and more irate at being asked for ammo "Oh my god, you're full on ammo, why do you keep asking for ammo?!" "Dude... I need ammo like... Really hardcore badly..." "You're full!" "I need it... So bad..."
The charm wore off as we were losing worse and worse so I stopped, but still, everyone had a good time and we all had a good laugh. He was adamant about not being the commander after that, however, but I still asked him for ammo from time to time. There might have been one or two more matches in there, but everything was pretty much the same. Singing in the ready room followed by my friend and I deciding which team would lose (as that seemed to be the trend). From there, we'd run around, get shot or bitten, and that would be the end of it.
On our last match, though, we joined up with the marines (deciding to weigh them down next) and were once more treated to having a loud individual yelling in our ear. This wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that this particular individual seemed to not realize that he's on a rookie friendly server and decided to take it upon himself to call me out, personally, for what he perceived to be shortcomings in my abilities. One particular instance that sticks in my mind is when I found myself pitted against a dog, a pig, and a big angry bat when I was by myself. I emptied my magazine a few times, got shot by the big angry bat, and decided that simply dying wouldn't be proactive and opted for a tactical flanking maneuver towards the rear. My display of self preservation was quickly met by a litany of profanity and derision from the commander who asserted that I ran from the pig (that he said was by itself) while he gave me health. I informed him that that firstly, I'm very new and did not know he'd focused his attention on me, and secondly, that there was, in fact, an entire barnyard of unpleasantness behind the grumpy pig that he had apparently not noticed. This correction, however, did not seem to sway the commander who spent the rest of the match berating me, questioning my sexuality, and insinuating that I, by merely existing, create a vacuum and the fact that I'd only started playing mere hours before is immaterial.
As before, we lost the match, but in general, the unpleasant person left a sour taste in our mouth and we decided that it would be best to simply stop for the day.
So, in general, we lost every match. Every. Single. Match. On the other hand, we did have a very good time losing and will probably join up and lose more later. My only suggestion to those reading this is... Really, don't take this game too terribly seriously, especially if you're on a server that specifically says it's rookie friendly. You're going to have very new players running around who have no clue what they're doing (like me!) and, while I accept that I'm not the best player in the world (And pretty poor when it comes to NS2 specifically. For the time being.) that's no reason to hurl epithets at me or at anyone else for that matter. We're here to have fun. Chill out and let everyone have fun.
If you're still here, thanks for reading everything. I know it's not exactly a productive post but hey, this is the new player forum, maybe this will remind everyone what it's like to be new and give someone new an idea of what to expect.
Good Hunting / Good Face Chewing (to whichever side you root for).
Comments
So you've clearly discovered that there's a little bit (a lot) of a learning curve goin on here. There's a bunch of better tutorials on youtube than the one's offered thru the game. look here: https://www.youtube.com/user/Abysmalnight for better tutes in the tactical operations videos.
Also, playing w/ patient vets will help a lot. To that end, listening to your commander can be very beneficial, provided your commander is also patient and know's what's going on. It can be frustrating to command, but berating your team harshly doesn't help new players like you to learn. So, if you end up on a server where it seems like certain players are contributing significantly to one team's win over and over, I'd recommend joining a new server to get w/ some new players.
To your comment about the people getting frustrated w/ new players like yourself in a rookie friendly server, I can at least offer some reasoning behind such a large skill gap sometimes on rookie friendly servers. Sometime there are just simply too few populated servers, and to join a game at all, sometimes vets will have to join rookie friendly servers. The hope is that the help and not stomp. However, you can also find rookie only servers that prevent people w/ a certain number of hrs from joining the server.
I can't say that I think that's the best way to learn, tho. I think if you'd really like to earn some victories, team up w/ some vets who will guide you thru some real rounds. You will learn a lot if you just ask the right people. A lot of time, people here will offer their steam profile so you can add them to friends to join a game with. I'm here steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197966072198/ you can add me if you'd like, I can help w/ some in-game basics if ever you'd like some help and see me on.
Hopefully you and your buddies stick around!
Really glad you're enjoying the game - sorry for the bad experience with players, but you know, they happen in all online games. In my experience, it's, ironically, mostly the lesser experienced players (relatively of course) who tend berate people. When you get in to higher levels of play, you will of course get bashed, but only because people start to recognize you and your skill and they're genuinly trying to correct your mistakes, because they know you can do better. In high level play they don't pounce on the player, but they do make it absolutely clear what you are doing wrong, and it can appear aggressive sometimes, if they care at all that is, but you really shouldn't take it as such. You only get grief if they consider you a good enough player - take it as a compliment. So there is a distinction to be made there I feel.
Anyway, I suggest you learn how the mute button works - Hold Tab, click the little sound icon to the left of the players name with your mouse, done.
But the single fact that you have a microphone, already puts you in an excellent spot - people tend to be very helpful to people with mics if you simply ask for it. Running around, acting like you know everything, tends to anoy certain people on the other hand.
Stick with the game, 50-100 hours, and I bet you'll fall in love like the rest of us
When you feel ready, try out the american reddit pugs or the european ensl gathers for some higher level competetive gaming! You will probably get destroyed, but you'll learn a ton
It was an interesting read, thanks for sharing your experience.
Don't be too discouraged when players complain at you, if they have constructive criticism then pay attention, if not, ignore and finally switch server. There is no point in taking a verbal beating, and to be honest, it is rarely a single rookies' fault that a game is lost.
If you stick with the game you will notice that many servers have regulars playing on them (we are a small community), thus you will be a recognized player if you are a frequent visitor. So if you notice that regulars often are on verbal rampages just ignore those servers and find some servers that you enjoy!
Sadly "Rookie Friendly" is a misconcept as they are most of time's not friendly to rookies at all. Wait for next patch and search a green server with "=" skill,
and pray there's not one of those douchbags inside already.
Also you might want to start with a 24 player count servers or so, if you try playing with a friend on the same team.
Later on, after I posted this, I tried a few servers with a little less of a skill rating (I assume that's what that green bar means, the skill of those on the server) and tried some of the lower skill servers, specifically one that even said you should only play on the server if you have less than 100 hours of game time. Of course, much like in the olden days of Unreal and Quake, such servers are magnets for high skill folks who just want to... I dunno. Pad their K/D, boost their stats/ego by killing new players. A handful of people in there were going 30 or 40 kills per death and completely changing the direction the fights would go. I just dropped out of that and went to bed. Really, just like any high skill game, the only way to learn is to just throw myself to the wolves until I manage to find myself a big enough stick to deal with said wolves.
I've yet to win a game in earnest (I accidentally wound up on the winning team once when I got split up from my friend) but that still hasn't slowed me down. As for individual replies, though...
@_INTER_ The commanders weren't always the same but it seems that when you're on the marines side, your commander is very vocal (and when you're losing, people tend to get hot) so I don't really blame them... Well, except for that last douche canoe. He was just a jerk but hey, like you said, every community has them. It's yet to bother me too hard. I do play on high player count servers, though, specifically so that my ineptitude can hopefully be more easily overshadowed by competent players.
@Cannon_fodderAUS I'll check out the manual for sure and thanks for the info. I'd rather get my hands dirty and make a ton of mistakes because I learn faster that way, but in my down time I have been reading such manuals and watching videos for more tips (though it seems to oddly make me perform a little worse).
@alnair Oh nah, I don't mind when people complain. I look at it this way, they're losing a match, they want to point at the easiest solution, they see me with my 1 kill and 15 deaths and say, "This guy must be the problem." The only way to deal with it at that point is to laugh it off and stick around until they get so hot that they ragequit (and are out of my hair anyhow) or they switch teams and shoot me (which still means they're out of my hair). I just have to keep doing what I'm doing and the annoyances go away.
Not that I'm immune to criticism, of course, I love when players tell me "Okay, hey, we need support over here, watch the vents" or "They like to hide over this spot right here, keep an eye out" or, my favorite "Jump around when they're biting your ankles makes you harder to hit" (that one helped a LOT). I just know to ignore comments like "Hey, all you greens, just spin in circles and shoot the floor" or "Switch to the other team, we don't need a handicap" or "Can you just suck less?"
Oh, and I looked up the folks that were on the server I played on that spent the vast majority of the time stomping on my head and apparently they were some of the top players for that server so... My bad luck I guess! Ah well, better to learn against good players.
@SantaClaws I know exactly what you mean when you say that some people badger because they know you can do better and I do try to be receptive to that sort of back-handed encouragement. I'm more than willing to give the game a fair shake so we'll see how it goes, though. I don't mind losing, it'll just make winning that much sweeter when I can look at the leader board and actually approve of my own performance. As for ignoring someone, I'll keep that in mind, it's a good tip. I don't like using my mic, per se, but I do when it's necessary or when someone's talking directly to me.
I may look into those groups that you mentioned, but I'll probably wait until I'm at least able to kill one or two things in a match before doing so. There's a difference between being unskilled and totally lost. I'm still in the totally lost stages.
@2cough I'll go ahead and add you on steam right now. I don't see myself playing a ton of NS2 right off the bat, but I'll definitely hunt you down if you're on and cause general mayhem and disarray. I can't guarantee we'll lose every game, but my win/loss ratio is only remarkable in the fact that it's consistent. As I told Cannon Fodder earlier in this post, I do read/watch some tutorials and I'll try to add the ones you suggested to my playlists. A lot of the information seems to repeat itself (If you're a skulk, jump on the walls. If you're a marine, bottleneck them and keep an eye on the vents. Travel in groups no matter what you are. Hit and run as an alien, keep distance and aim as a marine) but there's always little tidbits of new information that help.
Anyhow, thank you all again for responding to my post, it's nice to see that there are plenty of friendly faces here as well as in game. Smaller communities tend to be the more pleasant than the massive ones and I'm glad that this one is showing that trend to still be true. I hope I see you all out there in the wilds!