Isn't the entire premise of NS2 great depth as reflected in skill gaps?
We're not talking about the general case but a specific artefact.
Healthbars are not a consequence of the game system, they don't apply to your proposition which is otherwise true (the more complex is a matter, the more gap between beginners and experienced people).
HandschuhJoin Date: 2005-03-08Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
The more I play with health bars the more I hate them.. seeing this thread gives the same feeling since it seems Uwe isnt close to considerinng to change or remove them... just utterly annoying
tbh the really good players/teams always knew pretty much the exact health of the lifeforms even without healthbars
Yeah but it also helps with aiming. Makes it a lot easier to track your targets which ends up helping good shots even more. It could even widen the skill gap between marine players which doesn't make sense in what you would think UWE is trying to accomplish. Just like the focus fade seems to widen the skill gap. You are making good players even more op'd. So yes, just by the very nature of these 2 features (health bars and focus) resulting in good players dominating more than before, they should be taken out of the game. It probably makes for a worse experience when a new player is up against a good shot/fade.
Your example only looks at one side and presents it like there isn't any change on the marine side.
The mechanic is definitely not equally impacting between the teams, imo.
These are some differences in impact that I see:
Marines do not move fast enough (especially on the subject of acceleration and evasive movement) for aliens to benefit from tracking assistance
Aliens employ melee damage primarily, where their need for accurate and finite tracking assistance is less
Marines do not crawl on dark ceilings, but even if they did they would not be hard to find at all for Aliens thanks to high contrast AV - unlike what marines see.
Ignoring nanoshield, there are 4 Marine "Time To Kill" timings to memorize - whereas there are 45 different Alien TTK timings to memorize (ignoring healing mechanics as well as boneshield, umbra, cara etc).
Only Aliens primarily utilize hit and run tactics to whittle down marines. At medium+ skill levels this strategy heavily depends on baiting and bluffing about your HP in order to be effective.
HandschuhJoin Date: 2005-03-08Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
And something else.. in completely dark rooms if at this moment the power shuts down I could still perfectly track the aliens only because of the health bar.. felt like cheating actually.. just randomly shooting in the darkness till an hp bar pops up..
Guys, this is the dev team that things ping bars are more informative than numbers... There's no hope of getting them to understand how flawed the HP bars are, especially in regards to the tracking assistance.
Honestly this all reminds me of back when the IW devs utterly destroyed the CoD franchise on PC... One of their "improvements" just happened to be ping bars, and they were notorious for flat out ignoring the community (actually they basically told the community to **** off)
Guys, this is the dev team that things ping bars are more informative than numbers that are fundamentally flawed... There's no hope of getting them to understand how flawed the HP bars are, especially in regards to the tracking assistance.
Guys, this is the dev team that things ping bars are more informative than numbers... There's no hope of getting them to understand how flawed the HP bars are, especially in regards to the tracking assistance.
Honestly this all reminds me of back when the IW devs utterly destroyed the CoD franchise on PC... One of their "improvements" just happened to be ping bars, and they were notorious for flat out ignoring the community (actually they basically told the community to **** off)
Wait a minute, Remi used to work on COD. It's impossible he's responsible for anything.
Guys, this is the dev team that things ping bars are more informative than numbers that are fundamentally flawed... There's no hope of getting them to understand how flawed the HP bars are, especially in regards to the tracking assistance.
ftfy
You'd think the solution then would be to fix the numbers so that they become accurate, but no that would require them to put in some actual work.
Didn't someone say that the steam browser shows more accurate ping information?
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited July 2016
Steam browser is most likely using the same system as the source games, which do indeed show accurate ping. NS2 is weirdly hooked into Steamworks is my guess and that would require this oddball rewrite of the code which fetches the latency... Also @coolitic, way to go off-topic man, you're fired! That's my job
Guys, this is the dev team that things ping bars are more informative than numbers that are fundamentally flawed... There's no hope of getting them to understand how flawed the HP bars are, especially in regards to the tracking assistance.
ftfy
You'd think the solution then would be to fix the numbers so that they become accurate, but no that would require them to put in some actual work.
Didn't someone say that the steam browser shows more accurate ping information?
Yup. I'm just the guy making sure the facts aren't misrepresented.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
@elodea mind you this wasn't directed at you on a personal level, it might look like it now that I read it back. It was a heat of the moment kinda thing to see blatantly obvious things about this entire issue being ignored and sidetracked
Comments
We're not talking about the general case but a specific artefact.
Healthbars are not a consequence of the game system, they don't apply to your proposition which is otherwise true (the more complex is a matter, the more gap between beginners and experienced people).
Yeah but it also helps with aiming. Makes it a lot easier to track your targets which ends up helping good shots even more. It could even widen the skill gap between marine players which doesn't make sense in what you would think UWE is trying to accomplish. Just like the focus fade seems to widen the skill gap. You are making good players even more op'd. So yes, just by the very nature of these 2 features (health bars and focus) resulting in good players dominating more than before, they should be taken out of the game. It probably makes for a worse experience when a new player is up against a good shot/fade.
These are some differences in impact that I see:
What are some examples where both teams benefit?
Yes I concede that 2 out of 13 alien weapons I can think of (gorge spit and lerk spikes) also benefit aliens in one manner.
Honestly this all reminds me of back when the IW devs utterly destroyed the CoD franchise on PC... One of their "improvements" just happened to be ping bars, and they were notorious for flat out ignoring the community (actually they basically told the community to **** off)
ftfy
Wait a minute, Remi used to work on COD. It's impossible he's responsible for anything.
You'd think the solution then would be to fix the numbers so that they become accurate, but no that would require them to put in some actual work.
Didn't someone say that the steam browser shows more accurate ping information?
Yup. I'm just the guy making sure the facts aren't misrepresented.
(Haha.)