For one of the first changes, what does everyone think about the possibility removing cysts? I want to try and push for one change as soon as the opportunity affords itself and I'm trying to think what might be the most interesting/rewarding to try in terms of positively changing the feel of the game.
To go into detail: This would not remove infestation. Only the cyst structure itself and the tedious upkeep (from both teams) that goes into them during the course of a game.
-You would no longer need infestation to drop structures as an alien commander.
-Structures would not automatically grow if they are dropped off-infestation and you'd still require drifters and/or gorges to build them.
-Infestation would spread automatically via an "invisible" cyst chain from the hive to nearby (1 room or so) structures - Infestation would also spread from structures themselves
-Infestation-reliant abilities like Bonewall and Rupture would remain unchanged and usable
This would eliminate:
-The need to constantly fuss over your cyst chain as Kham (and for newer players to figure out the hows and whats of fussing over your cyst chain)
-Having to constantly shoot cysts as marine (and especially in cases where aliens gain a lead and the alien commander starts cyst spamming the map)
-The need for certain map design choices/limitations
There would need to be some minor adjustments to alien RT cost and grow time to accommodate the removal of cysts.
I know this is somewhat of an odd change considering the topic at hand but I do think cysts add an unneeded amount of complexity and the feeling of being a 'chore' to the gameplay (they are tedious for veteran players and 'noob traps' for newer players [on both teams]). This is of course not something that has been confirmed or set in motion or anything of the sort. I am just posing the idea to gauge interest in trying this out.... and should it become a reality I also want to emphasize that of course nothing in the game is permanent. If we were to implement it and it turns out that it doesn't work out the way everyone expected- we'd have the option to revert it (we'd also probably release it as a mod for testing first).
I would say finally! Would be an awesome change and make the game so much better in the long run.
-Infestation would spread automatically via an "invisible" cyst chain from the hive to nearby (1 room or so) structures - Infestation would also spread from
This means if an alien comm/gorge has a structure built across the map behind enemy lines the invisible cyst chain won't paint a big line directly to it, right? Perfect if so.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@rantology Infestation would have to no longer dmg armor on marine structures, and purely just be a visual demonstration of territorial lines / encroachment.
@rantology Infestation would have to no longer dmg armor on marine structures, and purely just be a visual demonstration of territorial lines / encroachment.
That's a good point. I don't think that changes too much though. How often does that change the outcome of a game? I don't think about it enough. Also, let's say Aliens had an RT infestation out to the area the marines are trying to ARC from. You could still have that infestation do damage if you want, or you could remove the damage entirely. It would make it harder to ARC or move marine structures too close to infestation since you are running into bone wall areas and taking slight damage. Or with phase gates - if they were built on infestation they could take slight damage as a penalty for building too close to an alien base. That would force marines to build phase gates farther away or take the risk of losing your phase gate faster. Could be better or worse for gameplay. These would have to be play tested and could go either way.
Since you are feeling so active, I too will dump my mind, which has enough ideas to keep you busy for next 10 years ;P You know TL;DR. Feel free to ignore. It is mostly for my peace of mind anyway
I read the document in the blog and, well, my opinion is that you are kinda sorta little bit trying to fix things that aren't broken or at least work in some sense. (Certainly, what is in there would not be at top of my priority list, if I was thinking about the new recruits and alien cubs - but sure, it would be on the list somewhere).
I have categorized problems/posible solutions(if I have any good ones) to 4 types:
1) The game needs to inform better, and provide good environment to learn (I assume learning is additional fun in any game, if aplicable).
2) The game have things/features/upgrades that does not participate in the game(some features are simply uneffective and a trap for newbies)
3) Things that are broken, wrong, unintuitive, annoying, frustrating or so unrealistic it hurts (can helps newbies, if things work according to common sense)
4) Some brand new things, that can be fun (and do not brake too much existing and working things)
The actual problems:
1 a) The Map, M-menu, X-menu, Evolve menu and submenus and Prototype lab have bad discoverability. -> Make key binding visible on-screen on apropriate places. Improve interactible buildings more visible on map.
1 b) Map is rarely properly used by new and even <100 h players. -> Maybe make it purchasable, so players appreciate it more. Make it very clear in tutorial it should be used ALL THE TIME. If you do not open your map for 30 seconds, there is a chance you are doing something wrong. 1 d) also would help.
1 c) People rarely use "concede" in appropriate situations. Those last stands get old fast. -> Make it clear in tutorial it is okay to lose/concede. Maybe allow commander to concede for the team (perhaps allow 10 s vote to overrule).
1 d) Newbies overcommit/overdefend/focus too much on one thing. -> Allow commanders to put (multiple) objectives/tags on map (other than "expand"). It will be commanders fault if those objectives are not reasonable. I suggest e.g. something to the meaning "defend", "attack", "build" - especialy for sneaky PG, "slow down enemy progress only", "abandon", "scout", "recap/reaquire(assume no/low opposition)", "harass/hit and run", "box in/attack carefully" and "storm now". Maybe even some XO can make those instead of comm. With that feature clunky individual player control can be removed.
1 e) Newbies wander off, in the worst case even loosing onos or JP+weapon. -> Assingn to them "Seargeant" (closest skilled player of appropriate class -> JP to JP newbie, SG or rifle to GL newbie, gorge to onos etc.). Idealy someone with mic. And make them aware of each other (the parasite-like vis should work) and distinguish them when they talk over mic.
1 f) Skilled players stack against newbies. Newbies do not know how to handle that situation, so bad game starts. -> Do not allow badly stacked games to start. Spread newbies evenly among teams. Newbie is an another name for "support class". Surely the team which can get more from their assigned newbies will win!
1 g) Newbies get JP/weapon, Exo, Onos, Fade too rarely to learn. Also encounters are too rare and too swift and usualy 1 vs 1 veteran for them to learn aim and manuvering-> It helped me a lot to play Combat and Siege, when I started. Also recommend 42 player servers to them, where they can move in groups and shoot/chew often and at least hit something.
1 h) Game informs poorly about the concrete purchasables/evolutions. They even mislead that the purchase is ubiquitous upgrade.-> They need MORE visible label what their tactical thing actually is. Something like Skulk-"Basic allaround class", Gorge - "Support and ranged anti-structure", Lerk - "Agile anti-personel", Fade - Assasin class, Onos -Tank class. Or even tags/gauges how they do in department of "agility", "structure demolition", "personel killing" and "support". Similarily for marine weapons - shotgun="you need aim", GL="good long-ranged, poor short-ranged", FT="bad anti-liveform, good anti structure"...
2 a) Nobody uses: web, stab, contamination, railgun exo. Limited or awkward use: Flamethrower(I use it to only kill Skulks by the sheer chaos and lags it causes. Somewhat useful to have 1 max 2 FT in team vs buldings), babblers, xeno (only useful against turtle), sentries(lowly bile gorge kills those expensive things fast)
2 b) Lot of combinations of liveform+upgrade doesn't even make sense. It doesn't even feel like a choice. Does anybody use a Adrenaline Skulk(vanilla skulk rarely runs out of energy)? Celerity Gorge(when you need lot of energy for that spit, heal and slide)? Phantom Fade (knowing where marines are, so you don't run in large group seems way more useful, than hiding for liveform that can get easily close to marine and run whenever it wants). Regeneration - useful only on game where you don't have crag, gorge, tunnel or hive closeby(sounds more like bad-comm/gorges game). -> Not sure what to do about that...
2 c) Most of the buildings are superfluous to the gameplay. Comm will just build them somewhere safe and they will usually survive untill the end of game. The game is only about the hive/CC, power, PG and observatory and crag -> Maybe limit the building count in one room or even allow only one building in every room with RT. That will even make those power nodes and sentries more useful.
3 a) You fixed the loading times nicely. Now fix the delay to actual round start! -> I guess enforce FET (maybe allow player to state side preference in options). Choose randomly two even commanders(that means even rookies! They will finally get live practice and fair game!). Aaaand we have game in 5 seconds. And of course add vote to menu for classic team creation(sure FET is not for all situations).
3 b) Bunny-hopping marine. In which military school do they teach that? -> Make it maybe just a little bit more SWAT-like. You know - covering your comrade, covering the exits, positioning. I guess railing stunts and whatnot are okay, but the usual skulk marine dance, where you don't know, who is the skulk and who marine? I did grow acustomed to it, yes. But what would the newbie trained by physical reality think of that?
3 c1) Damage lag. I hate it. Even with low ping I hear usualy only 4 shots or 1 bite before I die. I hate it. It seems so unfair -> Maybe at least play those hit/bite sounds even fake ones. Could actualy help those newbies to know it WAS their mistake and no game bug and also to learn how many shots/bites does it take to kill.
3 c2) Damage lag. I hate it. I have a rifle. I track a skulk. I aim at his head and end at his tail, never leaving aim at his body inbetween. I count 6 rounds fired. Then it shows the damage - something riddiculously small like 10 or 20. -> Well the rifle animation and sound is wrong( at least for single shot fired, where it skips and cuts the sound).
3 d) I hate that you need to know the stupid shotgun pattern to do actual damage. -> Change the pattern, save the newbie. Maybe you could try shotgun damage based on the area of circle and distance the alien covers (that means low computation complexity, but instant travel time bullets).
3 e) Those basic crosshairs are bad. Too low contrast. That weird lower crescent on rifle is misleading for me. I gave up my strict no chat policy about my 200th h of this game and went to custom crosshairs. Ergo: New players are even more disadvantaged vs veterans who mostly uses them -> make better CHs or allow broad ingame CH choice. Maybe enable crosshairs for alien, which will help newbies to chew.
3 f) Tunnel/PG death and bug. Hate when the tunnel is trying to swallow me and fails to do so(or PG fails to transport causing PG clog), when I need to run away. Also that death when you are already inside and die from nothing. -> Maybe just teleport the dead player to the place of his real death( less anoying, frustrating and rage causing = good for new players?)
3 g) You know, the Builder looks more high-tech with those nice techy beams than the welder. Also welding potentionaly nuclear power node or your fellow marine - what could go wrong? -> Maybe swap the tools.
3 h) In every sci-fi, FTs are good for clearing vents. -> Maybe propagate damage in vents. Make the flame follow the wall it hits. Seems simple, but sure not as simple as the tick-based FT implementation...
4 a) maybe take custom maps, polish them, give them a UWE stamp and make them available on most servers.
4 b) Infestation doing some more mess if unchecked by marines. Maybe slow healing, preventing scan, medpack, ammo, faster structure/armor damage. Could make Contamination more useful.
4 c) make the game more about destroing enemy upgrades (instead of whole hives and CCs) and allow both teams to potentionaly upgrade everything to maximum( on even defensive games ). Maybe something like the solution to 2c).
Sorry to steal some ideas from others. And sorry for the wall of text on your webpage I was aiming to list everything I could think of (sort of to outline a complex alternative to the original document from developers). What do you think?
Honestly I'd prefer to see a lot of the smaller changes to make the game more intuitive/rookie friendly before we go into a big balance change like removing cysts.
For one of the first changes, what does everyone think about the possibility removing cysts? I want to try and push for one change as soon as the opportunity affords itself and I'm trying to think what might be the most interesting/rewarding to try in terms of positively changing the feel of the game.
My thoughts here is that so much time has gone into the asymmetrical design of infestation so much already that completely reworking it and coding hive to hive infestation only seems kinda sad to me,
right now noob marines come in and (aside from their team very vocally announcing to them that they suck and are losing) they see the infestation as a constant reminder of the map control going on,
as alien kham I feel there are few situations where this kind of change would allow me to viably take over a rt far away from where I am situated and accomplish much with it, aside from maybe setting up a shade for an incoming tunnel, and furthermore does little to aid in new player syndromes,
rather than rescrapping cysting entirely, I think revisiting existing tech would be more interesting such as either
-giving clogs a very small radius of infestation so gorges now work much more closely with the Kham to infest the map
-dropping contamination to biomass 2-3 (iirc, Contams Hp scales with biomass so contam at this biomass level would only have around 2-3 hundred hitpoints for a 5 Tres purchase)
this way ruptures/mist/bonewall are still erupting from infestation which is easy for new players to note, and the general atmosphere of the game retains the feeling of infestation washing over the map for victorious Aliens.
just my 2cents of feedback
If anyone has any comments on my post from page 5 as well i'd be interested to hear
ScatterJoin Date: 2012-09-02Member: 157341Members, Squad Five Blue
Since cysting is about 50% of what the alien commander does, what is its job now exactly without cysting? Happy with the changes proposed though.
On another infestation related note; can we please get infestation to cover the entire room that is within the alien control and not just form blotchy coverage as is currently the case with cysting? Right now it spawns 6 points at a certain maximum range and with a 20 metre or so radius about the point that actually infests. Looks terrible.
Since cysting is about 50% of what the alien commander does, what is its job now exactly without cysting? Happy with the changes proposed though.
On another infestation related note; can we please get infestation to cover the entire room that is within the alien control and not just form blotchy coverage as is currently the case with cysting? Right now it spawns 6 points at a certain maximum range and with a 20 metre or so radius about the point that actually infests. Looks terrible.
Well the good thing about alien commanders is you can jump out of the hive a lot and help your team. Also it would free up alien commanders to use drifters more which could be an added benefit. NS1 didn't have alien commanders and that worked fine. So limiting the things an alien commander has to do so he can assist more I don't think would be a bad thing. Also great use of the drifters vs helping out your team in a rush or as a gorge could be the main focus of an alien commander. More active potentially.
So something that might assist with this is increasing the chances to learn and fail.
Maybe a simple warm up or a simple game mode could do wonders for getting hands on time to practice separately from a robust tutorial.
I am thinking quick to engagements, fast to respawn, and containing an objective similar to one that may play out in a normal NS2 round. (never pass up an opportunity to teach the right thing!)
Maybe play that game mode for 5/10 min then the map changes to a classic round, rinse and repeat etc
Combat Mod was very close to that. This is how me and others learned to play lifeforms. But yeah...... it doesn't exist anymore.
Any thoughts on removing turrets from NS2? The reason I don't like turrets is when marines place them in base. The base rush is an important play for aliens early to mid game. By placing turrets well in your base, you remove the ability to rush base unless you get bile bomb or have onos a lot of the time. With mines, you can have a skulk jump on them, or can be killed pretty easily by lerks. Turrets really change the way the game is played and I think for the worse. Motion tracking is not in this game, but was in NS1 - I'm proposing to remove turrets as well.
Hi! This is my very first post on the forums,and I thought I might add my own suggestions!
1.[Bring back Shadow-Step!] I know many Fades just use blink,but Shadow-step has saved me so many times by quickly shifting away from a mine or grenade. It also helped me close in on Marines without my screen getting all distorted!
2.[Both teams have their own "Lights."] If I recall correctly,someone a few pages back suggested that Aliens used bio-luminescence as lighting,and Marines would use...erm...lights! Instead of having the ugly red emergency lights turn on after the power went out,what if it stayed off? It would make fighting in the dark REALLY scary and fun,and encourage Marines to use flashlights more and stay close to one another! (They should stay grouped always!) Plus,walking into a dark,orangey glowing room would surely give off the message "You're in Kharaa territory now..." And since people are suggesting the removal of cysts,what if instead of spreading infestation,they gave off Bio-Luminescence? It would allow players to still use cysts AND have infestation without the chore of cyst-chains! And maybe Alien Vision (or whatever it's called) could let you see even better in the dark instead of just outlining geometry?
3.[Make Fades "Mist like" again while blinking!] As you can tell,I LOVE the Fade! And when I bought the game in December 2012,seeing that blue,misty figure flying around scared me so much! Plus,since it was hard to see,in small dark areas it would actually give off the illusion of them teleporting! But now they're barely "covered" by the mist,and now it looks like their awkwardly flying around. I went into spectator to watch it from a distance....it look really....stupid. Seeing a fade fly around in the air just took away the scaryness of it,and made it more annoying to get killed by a flying alien. (Not you lerk!) If it were misty again,it would bring back SO much nostalgia,and possibly make it easier for fades to escape in dimmly lit areas,and bring back the illusion of teleporting! (Isn't that the Fade's signature anyways?!)
Sorry for the long post. I hope you like the suggestions I posted! Also,i'll probably be commenting here alot,I recently got back into NS2,and I am SOOOO happy to see the Devs working on it again and actually listening to suggestions! That's all!
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
Have commander spawn as gorge to build his own shit, fun ensues. I dont think infestation needs to be coming from structures at all, but it doesn't bother me. I think that you can just use cysts as an entity separate from building. Add cool new comm abilities that they can use in place of getting upgrade chambers.
It's akin to the leap strat where you forgo upgrades to get a second hive and leap ASAP. Whoever said it is right, there's no need for extra new coding, and no need for a waste of the existing.
Repurpose and add new is my feel. Just make it so the marine don't shoot cysts to kill buildings, they'll kill cysts to weaken the alien resistance.
WyzcrakPot Pie AficionadoJoin Date: 2002-12-04Member: 10447Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
I commonly use cysts to prepare for bone walls in the map area halfway between my most forward structure and the oncoming Marines (this is the area in which Onos/etc will be retreating vulnerably). I also sometimes use cysts to echo eggs to forward locations where I have no structures.
I accept that some valid uses for cysts are not justification for keeping cysts.
I'd love to see them remain for optional use, and I'm plenty receptive to evaluating their total removal.
So something that might assist with this is increasing the chances to learn and fail.
Maybe a simple warm up or a simple game mode could do wonders for getting hands on time to practice separately from a robust tutorial.
I am thinking quick to engagements, fast to respawn, and containing an objective similar to one that may play out in a normal NS2 round. (never pass up an opportunity to teach the right thing!)
Maybe play that game mode for 5/10 min then the map changes to a classic round, rinse and repeat etc
Combat Mod was very close to that. This is how me and others learned to play lifeforms. But yeah...... it doesn't exist anymore.
Right, exactly. However the only issue (besides integrating combat officially) is that combat is so very different in regards to objectives and upgrades and UI etc that I was thinking something more familiar to classic mode - like assaulting a hive in crossroads or some close spawn / instant respawn / PGP mod like setup but basically as a minigame mode or warm up.
^ IronHorse - I like your idea, but the goal is to teach players how to use lifeforms more effectively. I don't know if having a pre warmup round helps as much as it could. There is already pre-game mod in a lot of servers that allow you to test out a lifeform. Having that standard and a set time for it could help, but I don't know if that addresses the difficult part of this game - getting the movements down to be the most effective. It can't hurt, but I think there needs to be some kind of training mode that requires users to do certain movements or teaches them to do certain movements to accomplish a goal would help more. I'm sure a lot of players when they first play this game don't know the right or wrong way to move. I think there has to be some instructional guidelines to what works and what doesn't as a skulk/lerk/fade/onos. So maybe your idea is a good step, but maybe an extra level too could help.
It wouldn't hurt also if people could watch a video on what a pro player or verteran player does when he is a certain lifeform - what concepts he thinks about - what movements he makes at what times. We could just go with what you laid out and hope people take the time to learn it for themselves, but it takes a lot.
The proposed non-cyst system seems to me that it is closer to the original vision of the game (everyone remember that "auto-spreading" infestation video?)
A side question about the possible cyst change:
A while ago there was extensive discussion on game performance, and it was determined that cysts were a relatively heavy in terms of CPU load.
Would the newer "invisible" cyst changes possibly also improve client performance?
Also, on lifeform training:
There was an idea a while ago for a "Capture Point" style version of NS in which there were no commanders, and players would capture Resource and Tech points by standing in their area.
Players could use their accumulated resources to purchase weapons and gear to "Unlock" new gear and upgrades, that they could then buy at will, without additional cost.
Pretty much, Vanilla NS2 without any RTS elements, re-buy costs, or additional bells n' whistles from combat.
I agree with Benson. I can run NS2 on low settings at about 30-24 FPS,(it used to run ALOT better in the past,but then updates ) so having a large increase in performance would help me ALOT. (And 'm sure it'd help alotta other people too!)
^ IronHorse - I like your idea, but the goal is to teach players how to use lifeforms more effectively. I don't know if having a pre warmup round helps as much as it could. There is already pre-game mod in a lot of servers that allow you to test out a lifeform. Having that standard and a set time for it could help, but I don't know if that addresses the difficult part of this game - getting the movements down to be the most effective. It can't hurt, but I think there needs to be some kind of training mode that requires users to do certain movements or teaches them to do certain movements to accomplish a goal would help more. I'm sure a lot of players when they first play this game don't know the right or wrong way to move. I think there has to be some instructional guidelines to what works and what doesn't as a skulk/lerk/fade/onos. So maybe your idea is a good step, but maybe an extra level too could help.
It wouldn't hurt also if people could watch a video on what a pro player or verteran player does when he is a certain lifeform - what concepts he thinks about - what movements he makes at what times. We could just go with what you laid out and hope people take the time to learn it for themselves, but it takes a lot.
That's exactly what's being worked on - a robust tutorial.
So this would merely complement, not replace, the needs of a tutorial. Learning how not to play a higher lifeform very quickly and repetitively in 3 minutes time is far more valuable than twice an hour at great frustration.
Pre game mod is a superb start, it'd just need faster time to engage and maybe an objective /polish to make it a mini game.
^Sounds good regarding the mini game. Just make sure it's clear that this is a mini-game - warmup round for actual NS2. Practice lifeforms/shooting during this time while trying to complete the objective or something. Also maybe this would go on all rookie friendly servers - but certain servers could hopefully remove this part of the game. Perhaps allow for pre-game mod on non rookie servers, and put this new mini-game idea on all rookie friendly servers. I like the idea. It's combat mod in a sense without taking players away from the normal game. Just don't make it too much fun or people won't want to play the regular game.
In order for it to not feel like a normal game, and be like a warmup/deathmatch round - perhaps have everyone spawn on marines with a pistol vs all skulks for aliens - and it would say practice your pistol shooting and skulk play. That would last for like a minute, then it would switch to all shot guns vs fades or something and so on. There has to be a way where people are battling each other, but also doesn't feel like the regular game. It will be more boring than regular NS2 which is good (don't want people to prefer the mini-game) but you also have incentive to try things out.
Also while you are practicing your pistol or fade for example - a little pop-up would appear on your screen saying - want more practice/techniques for this life form?- go to tutorial under options and click on fade for example or however it was laid out. This ties the two ideas together and doesn't force a user to do certain tutorials, but strongly encourages them if something peaks their interest.
There was an idea a while ago for a "Capture Point" style version of NS in which there were no commanders, and players would capture Resource and Tech points by standing in their area.
Players could use their accumulated resources to purchase weapons and gear to "Unlock" new gear and upgrades, that they could then buy at will, without additional cost.
Pretty much, Vanilla NS2 without any RTS elements, re-buy costs, or additional bells n' whistles from combat.
Similar to what I am making with the NS2:Assault mod, unless that's what you're talking about. Still in development as I write this.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
Imagine this scenario: You're pushing into an alien hive, say we're on ns2_tram attacking Warehouse from Ore Processing.
You push with several marines into server, covering your entry with nerve gas. In the mist you stand defending your buddy who is building a 20 tres power node that a gorge starts bilebombing. Another buddy comes in to cover the bile with a flamethrower.
Eventually you're able to get the power node up. The commander activates a room-wide passive catalyst-like passive boost, that costs 20 more res, and last 15 seconds. With this boost, after desperately holding on, defending teammates, and using other resources available to you, you're able to take the hive.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited December 2015
@mattji104 that reminds me of the Legacy of The Void trailer, where the Protoss desparately defend a pylon being warped in, and the large reinforcement that follow. NS2 needs more epic moments like that and the one you described, other than just ninja PG strategies.
What's the state of the Wikipedia? Someone mentioned integrating an Encyclopedia, we could feature that on the main menu and on the escape menu so people will always have the convenience of accessing information about lifeforms, weaponry, structures etc.
I think one of the underlying problems with NS2 is that a wealth of information is so freely available but it's all over the place, outdated, unconsolidated. Only just now we are unifying the community under Discord, which is a great move by the way. We should unite all our community and information that's easily accessible in-game and out of game. We don't notice this problem as much as the majority of us are regulars and veterans but I am pretty damn sure the problem is magnified for rookies. No wonder they have such a hard time.
I used to get lost in the Total War series encyclopedias for hours.
Having a wealth of information ready for you to be accessed conveniently is NEVER a bad thing.
I am a newcomer with about 100 hours played. I remember many things that confused or annoyed me. I wanted to quit the game many times. I persisted and now I'm enjoying the game very much. You're right that in order to retain rookies, you really need to improve the newcomer experience.
First things first:
If you want to improve rookie experience, you need to ask rookies. You won't find them here. You need to reach out to them on the game main screen, or on map loading screen, or on death screen/pre-game mode screen.
You should use a proper tool for this discussion. It's much better to have a threaded discussion than a huge unthreaded flow like this (under a blogpost or in a forum). It's hard to watch out for replies, it's hard to add something, it just gets lost. I see some people link to userreports.com, yet I see no official links to it from anywhere (game main webpage, etc). People will not find it. Use good tools and make them discoverable. Don't require registration, that's puts off most. Allow external logins or just email-based (userreports.com seems to do this). Or use Steam forums for gathering feedback, that's available right away to everyone.
Now for improved rookie experience (from what I remember, in no particular order):
Add in-game encyclopedia listing all units, structures and abilities with simple description, recommendations, and perhaps even videos. Make it easily available from the game (from the evolve menu, allow to show encyclopedia entry for each lifeform).
Make it more obvious when game is not started and we're waiting for a commander. I can't count how many times I thought we're actually playing. Remove glitches like missing crosshair during pre-game, that only adds to confusion.
Make NS2+ mod the default. It improves the game so much I consider vanilla NS2 unplayable. It also adds to confusion of rookies, because if they by chance connect to vanilla NS2 server, some things work differently (for example C key is not a toggle, you need to hold it) and they have no idea why.
Consolidate the voting menus. I know of 3 different voting menus in the game - X button, M button and Esc->Vote button. That's insane, and it's one of the reasons why rookies never know how to eject commander or vote concede. (On top of that, X collides with last-game stats, so it depends if you quickly press it or hold it - this is madness).
Remove "concede not allowed" timer.
Make it easier for teams to concede or eject commander. It's very hard to do that now, mostly because people don't know how to do it. They react much better to F1/F2 voting, because that is obvious! So maybe change concede/eject into F1/F2 vote.
Make it more obvious who's currently talking. From UI standpoint, move the indicators from right screen edge to left screen edge, because everything is at the left screen edge. With larger screen, the right edge is out of your focus area and it's very hard to notice the speakers name. Make the name disappear gradually, so it's possible to still read it even if they bark a single command (otherwise the indicator is instantly gone, and you have no idea who was just talking). From in-game standpoint, if I see the person, it should be *very* obvious he's talking - add a big icon, or even better highlight him and his name. You can even consider highlighting the person through walls, even if I don't directly see him.
Make the near-world chat (added recently) more used. I haven't seen anyone use it yet, most people probably don't even know. Teach them, and add a default keybinding. This is much more useful when shouting something like "behind you!". When I'm using near-world chat, highlight the names of other players around me, so that I can easily address the right person.
Add more skill-limited servers. I know only of one (<1000 skill), and it's not always running. This helps *a lot* and I really enjoy playing there. No more freaking 2500-skill sharpshooter gods.
Make extremely good players handicapped in some way. If somebody has 10:1 K:D ratio or more, clearly the game is not balanced, and I can guarantee you the rookies are not enjoying it. This can be solved with skill-limited servers, but maybe you can even put a bounty on such a player - the enemy team getting extra RTs for killing such a player. Highlighting him in red in alien vision, so that rookies don't attack him one by one. Or something similar. I admit, this is controversial, but extremely skilled players were my #1 cause of rage-quitting this game. I was convinced they are cheaters with aimbots. Now that I have more experience, I tend to believe they are simply so good. But don't underestimate the emotions the rookies get from this.
It would be very helpful for rookies to see why exactly they died, because often they die and don't even know how. After death, replay the last 10 seconds in slow motion, in third person view or the killer view, and show them exactly what went wrong. This will help with cheater accusations greatly. How was it possible that he saw them when they though they were hidden? How come they got shot when it seemed he was looking the other way? Show people how they died.
Even better, it would be great to automatically save replay from any of the past few games, and be able to replay them and switch between views of any of the players.
Gorge build menu needs to be separated from the attacking skills, because people very often unintentionally switch into it during battle and then madly mash buttons to get back to a different attack. And end up building things instead. Move it to the last number (4?) and make the other skills grayed out with "not researched" subtitle when not available, or move it to something like number 0, far away.
Fix or remove unused skills and items. I've never seen webs. I usually don't see well used babblers, I think people mostly build them in accident/just for fun. Marines don't use other grenades than cluster grenades, and I'm not surprised - aliens are too fast and people don't believe they can hit them with it. When turrets are used, commanders get scolded. Flamethrowers are often bought by rookies who think it's a great weapon against aliens, while it's not, they just instantly die and lose resources. All these items should be changed or thrown out.
Add descriptions to items when buying them from armory. E.g. if you decide to keep flamethrower, write "mostly useful for damaging/disabling alien structures, not very effective against alien lifeforms". Will help rookies a lot.
Get rid of unbuilt invulnerable power nodes. The fact that good players build it to 95% and only finish it when needed adds a) busywork for good players b) confusion for rookies who get yelled at for finishing the power node (something the automatic ingame guidance system told them to do!). There's no benefit, only frustration. When power node is getting built, do it the same way as all other buildings do - start at low health and increase.
Get rid of medpack spam. It's a nasty way to keep uber-skilled players even more godlike. I have played too many games where an extremely skilled player kills 4+ skulks attacking him at once, and then marches forward and destroys everything else in sight including a hive, alone. Because the combination of a high-skilled player and a fast-finger commander can't be beaten by rookies. And they are dumbfounded why the hell is that marine still standing and killing everything, even though he should be ten times dead with all the one-time bites they managed to do before dying over and over again. Add a medpack delay either to receiving side (marine) or to supplying side (commander).
Unify build tool and welder. Either remove welder completely and make builder tool do everything, or have it still possible to purchase and show it as an upgraded build tool (different graphics) with extended abilities (weld marines). Use one key for everything.
Full-sized maps are one of the biggest problems in the game. Until you know maps by heart, you have to run around with map open. It's easier if you're a marine, because you have a minimap, but for an alien, you spend 50% time running around with map open. So first, you don't see anything properly, and second, the map graphics are so terrible that you constantly bump into walls that are not displayed in the map. Please, please, please, for the love of god, redraw the maps and a) make them extremely simple and clean b) include all walls or terrain elevation elements. It is so frustrating to walk around with map covering 90% of your screen, and not being able to exit the room, because the walls are drawn incorrectly. And if you close the map, you have no idea where to go.
Add alien minimap. I know it doesn't make too much sense (marines have HUDs in helmets), but for a rookie, it was one of the top reason why I refused to play aliens. Full-sized map is too clunky for real-time navigation, but without a minimap rookies just run through rooms randomly, or constantly stopping, opening the map, turning into a proper direction, running a few meters and over and over again. And dying, because static skulk is a dead skulk. I have died so many times when studying a map.
Make vent openings glow/get highlighted in alien vision. Vents are almost unused by rookies (and very much unused by me even after 100 hours of experience). Why? Because I can't freaking find them. Some are visible, but many are so well hidden (and the map graphics is so poor), that many times I have spent *minutes* running around a room looking for that particular vent that the map claimed should be somewhere here, and didn't find it. Frustrated, I kept running through the corridors. It's easier than finding vents, even though it means more dying. This goes directly against NS2 intention - sneaky skulks. Make the vent entrances highlighted and draw the maps better. You could also draw the guiding arrows when being near the vent to help discover it, because some of them are really insanely hidden.
When being inside a vent and the vent turns 90% vertically, I find it very hard to navigate. I have to turn around several times to figure out which ways are open, and by that time I lose track of which way I came from, so I need to open my map. Another set of guiding arrows showing possible directions near vent turns would also help a lot.
Show hit indicators by default and show real damage numbers. This is very important for user feedback. It happens very often that you try to chomp somebody but he's too far away or to the side and you don't hit him at all. Without any obvious hit indication, you have no idea, and then you're angry about game bugs. Also, I read somewhere that the damage numbers do not show real damage, but damage before damage reduction (armor types and such). It seems to go along with my experience when I damage a skulk for much more than he should have health (according to after-death stats), but he still doesn't die and kill me. If the numbers are really not final, stop the madness and show real numbers. It would clear some confusion, and it would also help players to discover whether e.g. a rifle or a pistol is more effective at Onos.
Remove movement mechanics which require thousands of hours to master, are unrealistic, and basically misuse the game engine. I'm talking mainly about very advanced lerk movement here. Some players are able to get invincible by performing something like a permanent epileptic seizure moves while still flying 100mph and biting everyone in sight. It's no fun, it's impossible to counter by average players, and it something it shouldn't exist - no creature is able to change its movement direction 10 times in a second. I see it as an engine hack, because I assume the hit detection goes nuts and most of the shots are not registered. There should be a limit on the speed with which you can turn around, regardless of your through-the-roof mouse sensitivity setting. But this also goes the other way - don't add hard-to-master features like strafejumping which will make overpowered players even more overpowered. I know good players need advanced techniques to distinguish themselves, but movement glitches are not a good idea. If there are other such techniques in the game (e.g. if you strafe while walljumping, you're faster), please remove them.
The cost of upgrades (either marine or alien) are off-putting. As a rookie, I die with shotgun as quickly as with rifle, or with lerk as quickly as a skulk. But the cost is disheartening, it takes me 5 minutes to earn it again. At least for marines, the guns are dropped and can be picked up by someone else (usually by good players, who are fed by rookies, because it doesn't work the other way round - good players don't die much and therefore rookies only buy, but almost never pick up for free). For aliens, the money is lost completely. I don't know how to fix this, but I consider it one of the major design issues. In my case, I ended up playing rifle marine or a skulk the whole game (even with 100 personal res), because upgrades made not much difference and only made me feel worse.
Add a game mode in which everything is researched, bases are invulnerable, and players can buy and evolve everything. This can be used by rookies to test their weapons/skills against other players. If they die, they don't need to wait for an eternity and save, they'll just buy/evolve again and experiment more. Something like the current pre-game mode, but all the time, so that you don't need to wait for it. Just a few servers with this "carnage" mode would suffice, it would be mainly for rookies to test everything.
Make the rounds start faster somehow. Usually there's no commander and I suspect some people might not even know that is a problem, they are just happy to fool around in the all-tech-available mode.
Engaging tutorials and practices mode would certainly do wonders for rookies.
I never notice that upgrades are available. Even though it's written on screen and there's an audio cue, I never notice it (there are too many sounds around and too many things happening on the screen). This is not a problem for marines, upgrades are applied automatically and you see weapons in armory. But for aliens, this is crucial, and I believe most rookies don't evolve lifeform traits. Especially when they use a hotkey for evolving last traits after death, you might figure out that a new trait was available for 20 minutes and you still don't use it. It should be more obvious on the evolve screen that the person should pick traits, and if I use a hotkey to evolve it and I'm missing something that could be added (especially when it's free), I should be visibly notified during evolve time with text and audio.
Make entering a comm chair a conscious decision, not just hit E. Ask "do you really want to be a commander? yes/no" and make them click. Explain what commander is, that only experienced people might want to be a commander, and how to log out. Too many rookies hop in the chair by accident, just pressing E because the tooltip says so, and don't know how to get out. Don't start the game immediately after getting a comm chair.
Show some feedback whether I'm welding something or not. Often it happens that I and a different player try to weld something, but I stand a little too far and I'm actually not welding it. But I don't know that, because I have no indication about it, I just see the percentage increase, and I have no idea that it's done by a single person, not the two of us.
It could be a good idea to indicate a server preferred language in the server list. Some servers do it in their names, but many don't. Since this is primarily a team-based game, it would help a lot to know which language the people are most probably going to speak.
Motivate people to use voice chat somehow. Grant badges. Most people are silent.
In the skill tree (J key), don't display just icons, but also names. Rookies don't know the icons, even I still don't remember/recognize some of them. Also, if you don't know the name, you can't ask/search for it.
And some annoyances that I observed:
Stop spawning people facing the ground.
Stop spawning the marine facing a different direction than he was looking into from the third-person view a fraction of a second before (when waiting to be 100% spawned).
Show marine buildings health bars properly when an alien is very close to them and/or facing down (e.g. skulk chomping on RT). Currently they just disappear.
Add shortcuts for buying items from armory. It there are some, make them obvious.
Other thoughts:
I don't see any issues with power node/cysts, as suggested here, really. I think they're quite fine as they are. That doesn't mean the proposals are not improvements, I don't know. I just didn't see any rookies issues with the current state of things.
People are discussing audio cues for 2 hives, 3 hives here. Honestly, I have no idea what it is good for, and neither rookies probably do. What is important is the availability of new upgrades (lifeforms and their traits). Not sure about hive numbers announcement. There are already too many announcements.
It would be great to be able to bind a special key for certain abilities, like parasite, that would perform one-time action, but keep the current attack selected. So that I could click a button to spit a parasite, but still use left mouse button to chomp, without switching. I don't know how good players do it, but they are able to parasite me in midair and instantly bite me a fraction of a second later. I find it very hard to do with default bindings.
Agree with all rant's points. powernodes and cysts do not add meaningful strategy whatsoever. Ironically they obfuscate the real objectives of resources and map control. They are just arbitrary buckled on requirements.
Their optimal use is also unintuitive. Leaving powernodes on 99% or 1% is silly. Hidden mechanics like cyst hp growth are forgettable and inelegant. Optimal play requiring manually placed cysts one by one to match the actual build rate instead of one long chain with a bunch of costed cysts sitting at 1hp is also silly. New players don't know when to shoot and when to ignore cysts either. If i place cysts around a gorge tunnel, many of them will shoot the cysts. Rules about whether structures are buildable off and on infestation need to be consistent.
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Not having played ns2 for a long time, there are things that i see very clearly now as accessibility issues especially on the RTS side. Tutorial is not a golden bullet. Ideally you want something that doesn't require a tutorial whatsoever to enjoy.
Design
There are a few false choices that shouldn't be there on both alien and marine side. The power gap between the most optimal choice/build order and least optimal is quite substantial. Build orders seem very cookie cutter and that's problematic for new players who randomly try everything. More often than not they go with suboptimal choices that the 'meta' has discarded for good reason. If you make significant resource allocation mistakes in an rts game your units are all screwed, and in ns the units are real people spending real time.
Lock robo behind armoury
Address false choices like RT recycling. If it's a net loss no matter the circumstance, then it shouldn't be there as a new player trap.
Remove alien commander into gorge - simplicity means consolidation and fat trimming, not mirroring for mirroring sake (If that assertion were true, you should be adding medpacks etc. to AC). The upgrade/strategy game is really thin for aliens as it is essentially the ns1 system with pres being more important than tres. Consolidation is necessary here not because 'ns1 did it', but because the current alien rts design requires it. I could talk alot about this one but i'll leave it at that since it's most likely this will not happen anyway (wasting art assets etc.).
Slower pacing between early to mid to late. The draw for most new players is the scary alien monsters in abandoned space station thing, not the gogo marine hyper aggression thing. Not that it's bad gameplay, but the latter isn't new player conducive as they progress to the next stage of the game way faster than they are able to feel comfortable doing. For example instead of learning and experiencing the early game in 5 deaths, you would extend this to 8 deaths (making up numbers here). Increasing rt cost will help do this by moving out timings as well as dampening potential snowball volatility.
Touching combat pacing and movement speeds should be beyond possible now. That will take more than 3 months of testing and iteration to get anywhere close to right. And that's assuming there is another possible solution out there that can span over high and low skill ranges.
Some UI stuff i noticed
Move scan, nanoshield, med, ammo etc. out of the ui categories and onto a 'hero ability bar'. 1 button press instead of 2, always prominent and visible.
Move the select all marines button top left down next to the minimap with the rest of the commander utility buttons
Tidy up group selection ui to show status of all selected marines instead of one random guy in the group.
Consistency with the small marine portraits on group selection. They only show up if you have more than 1 marine selected. e.g. select 2 marines, 2 portraits. 1 marine, 0 portraits.
Colour code those marine portraits based on hp
Hotkey letter in tooltips should be a different colour than white (like bolded yellow).
ammo/med icon above marine who requested ammo/meds.
Simplify tech tree popup. Remove the non-researchable ones (ip, rt, welder, 2nd pg icon). Move nanoshield and catpack next to cc. Change 2nd cc dual exo icon to reflect that it is a 2nd cc requirement.
The FPS side looks just about as intuitive and consolidate as it probably can be without super huge class mechanic overhauls.
Disclaimer: i have absolute lack of knowledge of how high end comp plays now.
Comments
I would say finally! Would be an awesome change and make the game so much better in the long run.
This means if an alien comm/gorge has a structure built across the map behind enemy lines the invisible cyst chain won't paint a big line directly to it, right? Perfect if so.
I'm eager to see these changes happen.
That's a good point. I don't think that changes too much though. How often does that change the outcome of a game? I don't think about it enough. Also, let's say Aliens had an RT infestation out to the area the marines are trying to ARC from. You could still have that infestation do damage if you want, or you could remove the damage entirely. It would make it harder to ARC or move marine structures too close to infestation since you are running into bone wall areas and taking slight damage. Or with phase gates - if they were built on infestation they could take slight damage as a penalty for building too close to an alien base. That would force marines to build phase gates farther away or take the risk of losing your phase gate faster. Could be better or worse for gameplay. These would have to be play tested and could go either way.
I read the document in the blog and, well, my opinion is that you are kinda sorta little bit trying to fix things that aren't broken or at least work in some sense. (Certainly, what is in there would not be at top of my priority list, if I was thinking about the new recruits and alien cubs - but sure, it would be on the list somewhere).
I have categorized problems/posible solutions(if I have any good ones) to 4 types:
1) The game needs to inform better, and provide good environment to learn (I assume learning is additional fun in any game, if aplicable).
2) The game have things/features/upgrades that does not participate in the game(some features are simply uneffective and a trap for newbies)
3) Things that are broken, wrong, unintuitive, annoying, frustrating or so unrealistic it hurts (can helps newbies, if things work according to common sense)
4) Some brand new things, that can be fun (and do not brake too much existing and working things)
The actual problems:
1 a) The Map, M-menu, X-menu, Evolve menu and submenus and Prototype lab have bad discoverability. -> Make key binding visible on-screen on apropriate places. Improve interactible buildings more visible on map.
1 b) Map is rarely properly used by new and even <100 h players. -> Maybe make it purchasable, so players appreciate it more. Make it very clear in tutorial it should be used ALL THE TIME. If you do not open your map for 30 seconds, there is a chance you are doing something wrong. 1 d) also would help.
1 c) People rarely use "concede" in appropriate situations. Those last stands get old fast. -> Make it clear in tutorial it is okay to lose/concede. Maybe allow commander to concede for the team (perhaps allow 10 s vote to overrule).
1 d) Newbies overcommit/overdefend/focus too much on one thing. -> Allow commanders to put (multiple) objectives/tags on map (other than "expand"). It will be commanders fault if those objectives are not reasonable. I suggest e.g. something to the meaning "defend", "attack", "build" - especialy for sneaky PG, "slow down enemy progress only", "abandon", "scout", "recap/reaquire(assume no/low opposition)", "harass/hit and run", "box in/attack carefully" and "storm now". Maybe even some XO can make those instead of comm. With that feature clunky individual player control can be removed.
1 e) Newbies wander off, in the worst case even loosing onos or JP+weapon. -> Assingn to them "Seargeant" (closest skilled player of appropriate class -> JP to JP newbie, SG or rifle to GL newbie, gorge to onos etc.). Idealy someone with mic. And make them aware of each other (the parasite-like vis should work) and distinguish them when they talk over mic.
1 f) Skilled players stack against newbies. Newbies do not know how to handle that situation, so bad game starts. -> Do not allow badly stacked games to start. Spread newbies evenly among teams. Newbie is an another name for "support class". Surely the team which can get more from their assigned newbies will win!
1 g) Newbies get JP/weapon, Exo, Onos, Fade too rarely to learn. Also encounters are too rare and too swift and usualy 1 vs 1 veteran for them to learn aim and manuvering-> It helped me a lot to play Combat and Siege, when I started. Also recommend 42 player servers to them, where they can move in groups and shoot/chew often and at least hit something.
1 h) Game informs poorly about the concrete purchasables/evolutions. They even mislead that the purchase is ubiquitous upgrade.-> They need MORE visible label what their tactical thing actually is. Something like Skulk-"Basic allaround class", Gorge - "Support and ranged anti-structure", Lerk - "Agile anti-personel", Fade - Assasin class, Onos -Tank class. Or even tags/gauges how they do in department of "agility", "structure demolition", "personel killing" and "support". Similarily for marine weapons - shotgun="you need aim", GL="good long-ranged, poor short-ranged", FT="bad anti-liveform, good anti structure"...
2 a) Nobody uses: web, stab, contamination, railgun exo. Limited or awkward use: Flamethrower(I use it to only kill Skulks by the sheer chaos and lags it causes. Somewhat useful to have 1 max 2 FT in team vs buldings), babblers, xeno (only useful against turtle), sentries(lowly bile gorge kills those expensive things fast)
2 b) Lot of combinations of liveform+upgrade doesn't even make sense. It doesn't even feel like a choice. Does anybody use a Adrenaline Skulk(vanilla skulk rarely runs out of energy)? Celerity Gorge(when you need lot of energy for that spit, heal and slide)? Phantom Fade (knowing where marines are, so you don't run in large group seems way more useful, than hiding for liveform that can get easily close to marine and run whenever it wants). Regeneration - useful only on game where you don't have crag, gorge, tunnel or hive closeby(sounds more like bad-comm/gorges game). -> Not sure what to do about that...
2 c) Most of the buildings are superfluous to the gameplay. Comm will just build them somewhere safe and they will usually survive untill the end of game. The game is only about the hive/CC, power, PG and observatory and crag -> Maybe limit the building count in one room or even allow only one building in every room with RT. That will even make those power nodes and sentries more useful.
3 a) You fixed the loading times nicely. Now fix the delay to actual round start! -> I guess enforce FET (maybe allow player to state side preference in options). Choose randomly two even commanders(that means even rookies! They will finally get live practice and fair game!). Aaaand we have game in 5 seconds. And of course add vote to menu for classic team creation(sure FET is not for all situations).
3 b) Bunny-hopping marine. In which military school do they teach that? -> Make it maybe just a little bit more SWAT-like. You know - covering your comrade, covering the exits, positioning. I guess railing stunts and whatnot are okay, but the usual skulk marine dance, where you don't know, who is the skulk and who marine? I did grow acustomed to it, yes. But what would the newbie trained by physical reality think of that?
3 c1) Damage lag. I hate it. Even with low ping I hear usualy only 4 shots or 1 bite before I die. I hate it. It seems so unfair -> Maybe at least play those hit/bite sounds even fake ones. Could actualy help those newbies to know it WAS their mistake and no game bug and also to learn how many shots/bites does it take to kill.
3 c2) Damage lag. I hate it. I have a rifle. I track a skulk. I aim at his head and end at his tail, never leaving aim at his body inbetween. I count 6 rounds fired. Then it shows the damage - something riddiculously small like 10 or 20. -> Well the rifle animation and sound is wrong( at least for single shot fired, where it skips and cuts the sound).
3 d) I hate that you need to know the stupid shotgun pattern to do actual damage. -> Change the pattern, save the newbie. Maybe you could try shotgun damage based on the area of circle and distance the alien covers (that means low computation complexity, but instant travel time bullets).
3 e) Those basic crosshairs are bad. Too low contrast. That weird lower crescent on rifle is misleading for me. I gave up my strict no chat policy about my 200th h of this game and went to custom crosshairs. Ergo: New players are even more disadvantaged vs veterans who mostly uses them -> make better CHs or allow broad ingame CH choice. Maybe enable crosshairs for alien, which will help newbies to chew.
3 f) Tunnel/PG death and bug. Hate when the tunnel is trying to swallow me and fails to do so(or PG fails to transport causing PG clog), when I need to run away. Also that death when you are already inside and die from nothing. -> Maybe just teleport the dead player to the place of his real death( less anoying, frustrating and rage causing = good for new players?)
3 g) You know, the Builder looks more high-tech with those nice techy beams than the welder. Also welding potentionaly nuclear power node or your fellow marine - what could go wrong? -> Maybe swap the tools.
3 h) In every sci-fi, FTs are good for clearing vents. -> Maybe propagate damage in vents. Make the flame follow the wall it hits. Seems simple, but sure not as simple as the tick-based FT implementation...
4 a) maybe take custom maps, polish them, give them a UWE stamp and make them available on most servers.
4 b) Infestation doing some more mess if unchecked by marines. Maybe slow healing, preventing scan, medpack, ammo, faster structure/armor damage. Could make Contamination more useful.
4 c) make the game more about destroing enemy upgrades (instead of whole hives and CCs) and allow both teams to potentionaly upgrade everything to maximum( on even defensive games ). Maybe something like the solution to 2c).
Sorry to steal some ideas from others. And sorry for the wall of text on your webpage
My thoughts here is that so much time has gone into the asymmetrical design of infestation so much already that completely reworking it and coding hive to hive infestation only seems kinda sad to me,
right now noob marines come in and (aside from their team very vocally announcing to them that they suck and are losing) they see the infestation as a constant reminder of the map control going on,
as alien kham I feel there are few situations where this kind of change would allow me to viably take over a rt far away from where I am situated and accomplish much with it, aside from maybe setting up a shade for an incoming tunnel, and furthermore does little to aid in new player syndromes,
rather than rescrapping cysting entirely, I think revisiting existing tech would be more interesting such as either
-giving clogs a very small radius of infestation so gorges now work much more closely with the Kham to infest the map
-dropping contamination to biomass 2-3 (iirc, Contams Hp scales with biomass so contam at this biomass level would only have around 2-3 hundred hitpoints for a 5 Tres purchase)
this way ruptures/mist/bonewall are still erupting from infestation which is easy for new players to note, and the general atmosphere of the game retains the feeling of infestation washing over the map for victorious Aliens.
just my 2cents of feedback
If anyone has any comments on my post from page 5 as well i'd be interested to hear
On another infestation related note; can we please get infestation to cover the entire room that is within the alien control and not just form blotchy coverage as is currently the case with cysting? Right now it spawns 6 points at a certain maximum range and with a 20 metre or so radius about the point that actually infests. Looks terrible.
Well the good thing about alien commanders is you can jump out of the hive a lot and help your team. Also it would free up alien commanders to use drifters more which could be an added benefit. NS1 didn't have alien commanders and that worked fine. So limiting the things an alien commander has to do so he can assist more I don't think would be a bad thing. Also great use of the drifters vs helping out your team in a rush or as a gorge could be the main focus of an alien commander. More active potentially.
Combat Mod was very close to that. This is how me and others learned to play lifeforms. But yeah...... it doesn't exist anymore.
1.[Bring back Shadow-Step!] I know many Fades just use blink,but Shadow-step has saved me so many times by quickly shifting away from a mine or grenade. It also helped me close in on Marines without my screen getting all distorted!
2.[Both teams have their own "Lights."] If I recall correctly,someone a few pages back suggested that Aliens used bio-luminescence as lighting,and Marines would use...erm...lights! Instead of having the ugly red emergency lights turn on after the power went out,what if it stayed off? It would make fighting in the dark REALLY scary and fun,and encourage Marines to use flashlights more and stay close to one another! (They should stay grouped always!) Plus,walking into a dark,orangey glowing room would surely give off the message "You're in Kharaa territory now..." And since people are suggesting the removal of cysts,what if instead of spreading infestation,they gave off Bio-Luminescence? It would allow players to still use cysts AND have infestation without the chore of cyst-chains! And maybe Alien Vision (or whatever it's called) could let you see even better in the dark instead of just outlining geometry?
3.[Make Fades "Mist like" again while blinking!] As you can tell,I LOVE the Fade! And when I bought the game in December 2012,seeing that blue,misty figure flying around scared me so much! Plus,since it was hard to see,in small dark areas it would actually give off the illusion of them teleporting! But now they're barely "covered" by the mist,and now it looks like their awkwardly flying around. I went into spectator to watch it from a distance....it look really....stupid. Seeing a fade fly around in the air just took away the scaryness of it,and made it more annoying to get killed by a flying alien. (Not you lerk!) If it were misty again,it would bring back SO much nostalgia,and possibly make it easier for fades to escape in dimmly lit areas,and bring back the illusion of teleporting! (Isn't that the Fade's signature anyways?!)
Sorry for the long post. I hope you like the suggestions I posted! Also,i'll probably be commenting here alot,I recently got back into NS2,and I am SOOOO happy to see the Devs working on it again and actually listening to suggestions! That's all!
It's akin to the leap strat where you forgo upgrades to get a second hive and leap ASAP. Whoever said it is right, there's no need for extra new coding, and no need for a waste of the existing.
Repurpose and add new is my feel. Just make it so the marine don't shoot cysts to kill buildings, they'll kill cysts to weaken the alien resistance.
I accept that some valid uses for cysts are not justification for keeping cysts.
I'd love to see them remain for optional use, and I'm plenty receptive to evaluating their total removal.
Loving the brainstorming.
Right, exactly. However the only issue (besides integrating combat officially) is that combat is so very different in regards to objectives and upgrades and UI etc that I was thinking something more familiar to classic mode - like assaulting a hive in crossroads or some close spawn / instant respawn / PGP mod like setup but basically as a minigame mode or warm up.
Like give the marines the same with their nanotech. If you make it visible or not by something blueish is your choice.
This means if you would try to do a alien comm ability like bonewall off infestation in a marine controlled area, it would still not work.
It wouldn't hurt also if people could watch a video on what a pro player or verteran player does when he is a certain lifeform - what concepts he thinks about - what movements he makes at what times. We could just go with what you laid out and hope people take the time to learn it for themselves, but it takes a lot.
A side question about the possible cyst change:
A while ago there was extensive discussion on game performance, and it was determined that cysts were a relatively heavy in terms of CPU load.
Would the newer "invisible" cyst changes possibly also improve client performance?
Also, on lifeform training:
There was an idea a while ago for a "Capture Point" style version of NS in which there were no commanders, and players would capture Resource and Tech points by standing in their area.
Players could use their accumulated resources to purchase weapons and gear to "Unlock" new gear and upgrades, that they could then buy at will, without additional cost.
Pretty much, Vanilla NS2 without any RTS elements, re-buy costs, or additional bells n' whistles from combat.
So this would merely complement, not replace, the needs of a tutorial. Learning how not to play a higher lifeform very quickly and repetitively in 3 minutes time is far more valuable than twice an hour at great frustration.
Pre game mod is a superb start, it'd just need faster time to engage and maybe an objective /polish to make it a mini game.
In order for it to not feel like a normal game, and be like a warmup/deathmatch round - perhaps have everyone spawn on marines with a pistol vs all skulks for aliens - and it would say practice your pistol shooting and skulk play. That would last for like a minute, then it would switch to all shot guns vs fades or something and so on. There has to be a way where people are battling each other, but also doesn't feel like the regular game. It will be more boring than regular NS2 which is good (don't want people to prefer the mini-game) but you also have incentive to try things out.
Also while you are practicing your pistol or fade for example - a little pop-up would appear on your screen saying - want more practice/techniques for this life form?- go to tutorial under options and click on fade for example or however it was laid out. This ties the two ideas together and doesn't force a user to do certain tutorials, but strongly encourages them if something peaks their interest.
Similar to what I am making with the NS2:Assault mod, unless that's what you're talking about. Still in development as I write this.
That very well may be what I'm thinking of, lol. I really only remember that it was a great concept.
I have the memory of a gold fish.
You push with several marines into server, covering your entry with nerve gas. In the mist you stand defending your buddy who is building a 20 tres power node that a gorge starts bilebombing. Another buddy comes in to cover the bile with a flamethrower.
Eventually you're able to get the power node up. The commander activates a room-wide passive catalyst-like passive boost, that costs 20 more res, and last 15 seconds. With this boost, after desperately holding on, defending teammates, and using other resources available to you, you're able to take the hive.
I think that just sounds fantastic.
I think one of the underlying problems with NS2 is that a wealth of information is so freely available but it's all over the place, outdated, unconsolidated. Only just now we are unifying the community under Discord, which is a great move by the way. We should unite all our community and information that's easily accessible in-game and out of game. We don't notice this problem as much as the majority of us are regulars and veterans but I am pretty damn sure the problem is magnified for rookies. No wonder they have such a hard time.
I used to get lost in the Total War series encyclopedias for hours.
Having a wealth of information ready for you to be accessed conveniently is NEVER a bad thing.
If you think this is a good idea, vote for it!
https://feedback.userreport.com/19e981d4-394e-46de-997e-8913cc04aff2/#idea/76174
Wow, what a post. This is amazing feedback.
Their optimal use is also unintuitive. Leaving powernodes on 99% or 1% is silly. Hidden mechanics like cyst hp growth are forgettable and inelegant. Optimal play requiring manually placed cysts one by one to match the actual build rate instead of one long chain with a bunch of costed cysts sitting at 1hp is also silly. New players don't know when to shoot and when to ignore cysts either. If i place cysts around a gorge tunnel, many of them will shoot the cysts. Rules about whether structures are buildable off and on infestation need to be consistent.
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Not having played ns2 for a long time, there are things that i see very clearly now as accessibility issues especially on the RTS side. Tutorial is not a golden bullet. Ideally you want something that doesn't require a tutorial whatsoever to enjoy.
Design
Touching combat pacing and movement speeds should be beyond possible now. That will take more than 3 months of testing and iteration to get anywhere close to right. And that's assuming there is another possible solution out there that can span over high and low skill ranges.
Some UI stuff i noticed
The FPS side looks just about as intuitive and consolidate as it probably can be without super huge class mechanic overhauls.
Disclaimer: i have absolute lack of knowledge of how high end comp plays now.