Let's talk about the Elephant in the Room
schu
Join Date: 2012-08-04 Member: 154768Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2012-08-04 Member: 154768Members, Reinforced - Shadow
So I've lurked these forums for years now. And over the years a trend always appears. Whether it be something is too overpowered. UWE is messing the game up. The PDT is messing the game up. Build 249 was the best build in the game. Bunny hopping needs to be removed. Etc, etc. You get the point. Right now there's 3 main issues that are being discussed. Health bars on enemies, aliens are too weak; marines stomping games, and bots.
Let's get into this and nail it out.
1. The game is too hard - Every game is hard at the very beginning. There is a learning curve to every single game you play. This game has less of a learning curve than League of Legends. The more time you put into the game, the better you get and the more you improve. This is a natural process. Is this why we can't hold players? I highly doubt it.
2. Hidden mechanics - This game is full of hidden mechanics. This is not a bad thing! Every game should have hidden movement mechanics. Something players learn over time is great! This keeps the game fresh for those who figure this stuff out. They see a skulk wall jumping really fast and think to themselves, "wow! how can I do that?!" Then they see it again and again until finally...they try spamming space bar on a wall. It works! Is this why we can't hold new players? I doubt it.
3. Health bars - I'm going to say this now, this does not help you aim better. This does not make the entire team aim better. You only see a players health bar if you land anything that deals damage on the enemy target. For instance, if there are 2 skulks rushing you, and you only land a bullet on 1 of the skulks, you only see the health of THAT skulk you land a bullet on. Let's try another example, if you're teammate shoots the skulks and you stand there staring at the skulks, you still won't see their health bars. Another point, the game does not have auto-aim, seeing a health bar does not increase your accuracy.
If health bars are breaking this game, then why haven't damage numbers broken the game? This was introduced back in the beta. If people knew how much health enemies have, damage numbers also should give marines a huge advantage. Nobody seems to be arguing about this one. I don't understand. Health bars are in many competitive games. Overwatch, LoL, Dota. No reason for it not to be in this game.
4. Aliens are too weak - How so? Aliens gain res faster now than ever before. Aliens can have 3 RTs and get fades up at 6:30 minutes. Lerks cost 18 pres. Rupture parasites marines. Focus was introduced into the game, probably the strongest offensive ability in the entire game! Bone shield for onos is vastly overpowered; Onos gain net 900 HP over a few seconds from boneshield. Holy mother of god that's alot of health! And to top it all off, aliens come stock with a WALLHACK built into the game! How are aliens too weak?!
5. Marines are too strong - Once again, no they aren't. Over the past couple of builds, marines have been getting nerfed. Sprint is slower, mines have 30 hp (3 parasites to kill, 3 spikes with a lerk, 1 spit from a gorge), HMGs have a gigantic spread, only really useful against onos, plus they are the heaviest item in the game. With a jetpack, you still can't maneuver too well. Medpacks have been nerfed. Speaking of medpacks, marines also rely on a commander for health and ammo in and out of fights. As a marine, you are more prone to death than an alien due to their reliance on a commander for support.
I can go on. The point is, many of these statements I've seen on these forums are flat out stupid. I can give a counter statement that actually uses logic to nullify all of these points.
Maybe, just maybe...the problem with the game isn't the game, maybe its the players? Maybe people don't understand what they should be doing. Which is fine, they haven't learned yet. So the only thing I solidly agree with on these forums is a better tutorial. More about the map, less about you. The game is a RTS game through and through. The first person aspect of it is really just a side show. The FPS aspect isn't the main event is what i'm getting at.
Those players who are stomping pubs aren't out for kills most of the time. They are targeting harvesters, the aliens are just flocking to him/her one by one and he is standing in a great position to take on multiple skulks at a time. Those types of things can be avoided as a skulk and there are always other things to do. Biting extractors for example.
You won't win every game. You will always have players who don't quite get it. That's frustrating on a team based game. Just put up with it, move on. Stop nit-picking things in the game and blaming it for your loss. You lost because you didn't cover a lane correctly, didn't push a res node when you had the chance, didn't parasite those 3 marines who got a ninja phase gate up, didn't target the onos when he ran into the room, didn't beacon when you needed to, didn't bonewall during the engagement, didn't listen to the player who is making great calls...The list goes on.
Thanks for your time. Git Gud.
Let's get into this and nail it out.
1. The game is too hard - Every game is hard at the very beginning. There is a learning curve to every single game you play. This game has less of a learning curve than League of Legends. The more time you put into the game, the better you get and the more you improve. This is a natural process. Is this why we can't hold players? I highly doubt it.
2. Hidden mechanics - This game is full of hidden mechanics. This is not a bad thing! Every game should have hidden movement mechanics. Something players learn over time is great! This keeps the game fresh for those who figure this stuff out. They see a skulk wall jumping really fast and think to themselves, "wow! how can I do that?!" Then they see it again and again until finally...they try spamming space bar on a wall. It works! Is this why we can't hold new players? I doubt it.
3. Health bars - I'm going to say this now, this does not help you aim better. This does not make the entire team aim better. You only see a players health bar if you land anything that deals damage on the enemy target. For instance, if there are 2 skulks rushing you, and you only land a bullet on 1 of the skulks, you only see the health of THAT skulk you land a bullet on. Let's try another example, if you're teammate shoots the skulks and you stand there staring at the skulks, you still won't see their health bars. Another point, the game does not have auto-aim, seeing a health bar does not increase your accuracy.
If health bars are breaking this game, then why haven't damage numbers broken the game? This was introduced back in the beta. If people knew how much health enemies have, damage numbers also should give marines a huge advantage. Nobody seems to be arguing about this one. I don't understand. Health bars are in many competitive games. Overwatch, LoL, Dota. No reason for it not to be in this game.
4. Aliens are too weak - How so? Aliens gain res faster now than ever before. Aliens can have 3 RTs and get fades up at 6:30 minutes. Lerks cost 18 pres. Rupture parasites marines. Focus was introduced into the game, probably the strongest offensive ability in the entire game! Bone shield for onos is vastly overpowered; Onos gain net 900 HP over a few seconds from boneshield. Holy mother of god that's alot of health! And to top it all off, aliens come stock with a WALLHACK built into the game! How are aliens too weak?!
5. Marines are too strong - Once again, no they aren't. Over the past couple of builds, marines have been getting nerfed. Sprint is slower, mines have 30 hp (3 parasites to kill, 3 spikes with a lerk, 1 spit from a gorge), HMGs have a gigantic spread, only really useful against onos, plus they are the heaviest item in the game. With a jetpack, you still can't maneuver too well. Medpacks have been nerfed. Speaking of medpacks, marines also rely on a commander for health and ammo in and out of fights. As a marine, you are more prone to death than an alien due to their reliance on a commander for support.
I can go on. The point is, many of these statements I've seen on these forums are flat out stupid. I can give a counter statement that actually uses logic to nullify all of these points.
Maybe, just maybe...the problem with the game isn't the game, maybe its the players? Maybe people don't understand what they should be doing. Which is fine, they haven't learned yet. So the only thing I solidly agree with on these forums is a better tutorial. More about the map, less about you. The game is a RTS game through and through. The first person aspect of it is really just a side show. The FPS aspect isn't the main event is what i'm getting at.
Those players who are stomping pubs aren't out for kills most of the time. They are targeting harvesters, the aliens are just flocking to him/her one by one and he is standing in a great position to take on multiple skulks at a time. Those types of things can be avoided as a skulk and there are always other things to do. Biting extractors for example.
You won't win every game. You will always have players who don't quite get it. That's frustrating on a team based game. Just put up with it, move on. Stop nit-picking things in the game and blaming it for your loss. You lost because you didn't cover a lane correctly, didn't push a res node when you had the chance, didn't parasite those 3 marines who got a ninja phase gate up, didn't target the onos when he ran into the room, didn't beacon when you needed to, didn't bonewall during the engagement, didn't listen to the player who is making great calls...The list goes on.
Thanks for your time. Git Gud.
Comments
Well, it looks looke like most are gone.
Now we have players who dont communicate, dont listen and running around basicly brainless as skulks.
Im against dumbing down NS2.
But the sad truth is im afraid nothing else can help these players.
Expected a productive, insightful post. "Lets talk about the elephant in the room". And then your point is something newcomers have been whining about in this game since release? basically every game with a social element since release?
Son I am disappoint.
Maybe you didn't understand me when I wrote that. I was stating that all these issues that come up are people trying to find flaws with the game, when in fact its the player who made the post just doesn't know how to accept that and just assumes its the game that is broken, not them. Take all these posts about health bars and just read the people who post against it in the game.
I'm not trying to come off as a dickhead or anything. I'm trying to get a solid discussion on what actually is wrong with this game besides player retention. Everyone has an opinion on what needs to be done and what shouldn't be done. Rarely do I see good ideas and more often than not I just see whining.
Free 2 play? That to me is a great idea. If we can get a working, easy to use match making system in place. Then yes, I could see this game being very successful as F2P. League of legends, the most popular e-sport in the world, also has one of largest player base in the world - is also free to play. I'm not opposed to this game going f2p. Then I see people arguing about people would hack in the game, all the CoD players would flood the game and the game play would be shit. My question to you is.. if you're whining about the game now, what difference does it make when it goes F2P? Only difference would be a working match making system and thousands of players flooding into NS2. I'll take that any day over what we have right now.
Playing on 3 - 4 servers with around 200 players on a consistent bases. This NEEDS to be addressed. This NEEDS to be fixed. Healthbars have NOTHING to do with this. Players who don't understand clearly what to do to win is what is causing players to leave, not wall jumping skulks, not bots filling up servers, not healthbars, and most definitely not people whining with no solution to fix the problem.
meanwhile the REAL problems are basically ignored, if there are plans for NS2 to go F2P in the future, it is VITAL to find a way to deal with cheaters (saw one yesterday on woozas there are some), smurfs and most importantly a way to avoid unbalanced teams (stacking, broken shuffle), because NS2 like any pvp game relies ehavily on team balance to get quality gameplay.
Believe me @schu, you dont want F2P.
NS2 is nearly unplayable for me already.
Im not a div1 pro that won multiple Seasons, im only a ex comp pub player that want some good rounds after work. (i have no problems losing a round btw if both teams have a real chance to win)
But what happened to the game drives me already away. Im not talking about this "UWE is killing the game" bullshit.
Im talking about the players that playing this game at the moment.
I remember one round with daveodeth, i think he had a long break from the game, and i will never forget his comment:
"WTF is wrong with these aliens"
Round was over after 3 min btw with the typical Rinestomp after an hive shuffe.
The day NS2 goes F2P is the day i uninstall it and i will never play it again.
You can slaughter the waves of groundskulks and walkerfades if you want or ending up 170-3 as fade.
After that you can comment on all the "everything is op" and "cheater everywhere" threads
Hurray, what a great game.
With HP bars, you can single out one enemy and spray all your bullets on him. No, HP bars does not improve aim, youre right about that, but feigning retreats to draw out marines is not viable anymore.
HP bars may be good for games like overwatch and dota, but cmon... this is an asymmetric game, and marines being the ranged team benefit hugely from it.
Aliens know who has the lowest HP? It takes two medpacks and their advantage is gone.
Otherwise, good arguments.
It's too bad that's the players who play the game and not the game that plays the players... WHAT!?
But with so many rookies at the moment in the pub games the games are unbalanced not because of the team balance but because of the experience.
I'm a lerk/onos, i engage 1 or 2 marines then leave the fight. 10 seconds later I engage a lonely marine with one skulk.
1) Without healthbar : the marine cannot know my health pool (a gorge healed me ? I had the time to go back to the hive ?). He either focus me or the skulk but he takes a risk and has no way to know what is the best decision, he only uses his instinct, his experience (aka time between the last engagement, the number of second it took me to heal and the number of second it took me to go to this point of the map) and the data he got from his teammate.
2) With healthbars : he shoots 1 bullet at me, he sees that i'm low and he focuses then kill me. OR, he sees that i'm not low enough and proceed to kill the skulk, my attempt to distract him failed becuse he had that information and i lost my time (and even took some risk) to help my teammate.
Now, if you don't get the distinction between these two situations, your post joins the "flat out stupid" section. If the dev team wants to push the situation 2 then whatever, but please don't, like a lot of people before you, push the responsability towards the players.
As for the "OP" debate I think the smurtf AND the "hive force even" is so bad it can't give us any good representation of the actual game balance ; maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong...
On a more personal note, about the git gud troll or the "whining people"... You were, in all the players I've encountered since 2012, the player who whined the most (with bubba) ; you had the worst good call per hours played ratio (seriously, it was really bad) ; and your desire of recognition on a video game was so high it was embarassing (it actually made me cringe sometimes). So yeah... I have a hard time with your post , especially when insulting new players on gathers was done on a daily basis with you.
This will lead to the same ten arguments being produced over and over again, and nothing productive will be produced - especially since almost everyone tries to change everybody else's opinion, but is dedicated to this own. Guys... what's the point?
The complaints have always been about how they help you track your target.. Something the damage numbers did not do.
Also who cares if other games that are nothing like NS2 have hp bars.. They're irrelevant.
Firstly,
Scenario #1:
An experienced marine will know your health based on how you move/dodge with a lerk/onos. Lets say you engage a marine. He does 190 dmg to you. If you come back in, within a few seconds do you honestly think he wiped his memory of attacking you and decides to go after the skulk instead? You must be brain dead. Also, if a teammate calls out how much damage he did to you, and if it was a significant amount, and you re-engage another marine, if that marine is some what coherent he should know to attack you. You don't need health bars to determine that.
Scenario #2
Health bars are activated. You decide to re-engage a marine who clearly did 150+ damage to you. You still don't need health bars to know you're low. Lets say no communication was even stated. A new marine engages you, you're hurt but you decide to engage anyways with a skulk to clear the marine. If you engage with your lerk without armor and without a proper way to get out/disengage you deserve to die. With or without health bars. Health bars do in a sense, exempt some communication between teammates on how low something is. I give you that. All you are doing is taking away the marine from stating how low something is. Basically, someone is lazy and didn't want to point out how much damage he did to something. Which is something lower div players did alot. Which is why they were never in a higher division. Who would have thunk?
You shouldn't be engaging with your health that low anyways without a way to get out quick. Health bars have nothing to do with it. You think having health bars on in season 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 would have made players not call out damage numbers? You must be insane.
Secondly,
You are clearly attacking me in the last paragraph. I didn't want to say something about this but I must defend myself. If my attitude in the past has upset you to deter you from thinking logically about what i said in the opening post, then you are clearly stupid. You are saying my attitude in a competitive environment was "cringe worthy". And this "worst good calls per hours played ratio" doesn't even make sense. I assume you mean I make bad calls in organized play. I don't know where you get that from. Maybe from the gathers we've had together. Who knows...don't really care. But I can count at least 5 times where my calls some how helped win a tournament. If my calls are bad, yours must be atrocious.
Lastly,
This thread isn't meant to derail anything. It is a clear, thought out post about how people complain about game mechanics. Something I don't think I've ever done. Besides carapace giving 40 armor and increasing skulk health by 90%. That was clearly broken. And I have stated everything else in the OP about how bone shield is broken. I'm not completely oblivious to some game mechanics. The point was made. And I have not read a single post that has disproven it.
I stated we need a better tutorial that fundamentally helps players understand the RTS aspect of the game. Not the FPS aspect. This is an RTS game through and through. More attention should be brought to the map, not the player. I also stated that going F2P isn't such a bad idea once you really think about it. Open your mind up a little bit. Don't determine something isn't worth while without actually examining what could be the next era of a game. Sure, bad situations always come with good situations. That's something people need to figure out how to minimize, not berate.
Git Gud
newUWE*
Please, explain to me the difference between tracking and aiming. I really want to hear your thought process.
Because you have to aim yourself to follow the target, but the target becomes a stupidly obvious bar that basically says "shoot here" instead of a dark fast moving alien which is much harder to keep track of..
Plus you can keep track of the alien you already damaged in a group, which can be a huge benefit. Especially early game against skulk packs.
And why should going F2P rest on the shoulders of you uninstalling the game?
We lose you and mofo1. We gain thousands of players. That's a good trade off imho. Lose 2 players and gain thousands. That's probably one of the best damn tradeoffs anyone could ever ask for. Lets just say the rest of the community leaves too. We lose 200 players. Gain thousands. Still a good trade. What's your point here? I'm trying to figure out your logic, and for the life of me..I just can't. You think you uninstalling is going to damage this game? Are you kidding me? How full of yourself are you? Or are you too entangled into these forums you can't fathom ever leaving. And if you don't get your way you start spouting off your own beliefs on how to keep this game afloat. Because if UWE has been listening to you these past 4 years, I'm glad they are done. Because nothing you have said or done has ever helped this game. Not a damn thing. But you keep spouting your nonsense. Keep stating aliens are OP. Keep stating you are never wrong and you only lose because the game is just that imbalanced. It's not you right? You shoot extremely high accuracies and pinch every lifeform in the game..right? Hell, i bet your skulk bites 100% and parasites 100% accuracy. It must be the game then. That's why you're losing? All mighty god of NS2, please shine your fortune upon everyone else and tell us why this game sucks. I really love reading your posts about how the game is in dire need of revamping and it doesn't fit your playstyle.
Ok let me explain this to you because you are obviously confused. Tracking in this game is the SAME as aiming in this game. They go hand in hand. If I relied on a red bar to keep track of my targets for me, I would be embarrassed to say I'm a gamer. I don't lose track of something because a red bar isn't above their head. Tracking a lerk for X amount of seconds is the same as saying I was aiming at the lerk for X amount of seconds. You don't need a red bar to determine if you're doing that. The problem you are having is singling out a single target in a giant engagement. That's where all this health bar stems from. But like I said, I have no issues shooting a target in a giant rush of other targets. If i see a fade trying to frantically escape a room, I know he is hurt, even without shooting him. I don't need a red bar telling me his is hurt. Why else would he leave the room during a fight?
Let's go off of what Tinki said earlier. If health bars were disabled, then you wouldn't know how hurt something really is. That means that fade that tried to leave the room is now a mystery. You have no idea how hurt he is. But he is taking a huge risk staying in. He could lose his lifeform. If a marine just snap shoots a shotgun blast at the hurt fade and kills him. Without health bars, the marine still shot the weakened lifeform without a giant red bar above his head. It must be communication then. Because how else would the marine know to shoot the fade at the exact moment. I thought the fade was a mystery? There was nothing indicating how low he was but yet he still killed him. You know what that is called? It's called terrible lifeform play. It's called being greedy. Tracking/aiming has nothing to do with it. I would have shot a lifeform regardless of how much HP i saw above its head. I don't need a red bar to tell me "shoot here". I know to shoot there. It doesn't help me see the lifeform better. It's the same as it has always been. Shoot and kill the lifeforms. That's how you win games on marines. You don't need a red bar above their head to let me know that.
You must be Nostradamus or something! Though I'm sure there are as-of-yet undiscovered tribes in the Amazon that could've seen where this thread was going :P
If i uninstall cause F2P the damage is already done. And it looks like you dont understand the problematic behind F2P. But this can happen when you quote to one sentence out of context.
And i never said aliens are op. Marines are not op also btw.
And i never stated that i lose cause the game is inbalanced.
Wtf is wrong with you?
And if UWE had listen to me we had Skill based servers since ages wich is one the key elements for matchmaking.
But hey, and hosting one of the best servers NS2 ever had for around 3,5 years is nothing for sure.
Maybe it was at the pre "Schu-era", so you never had the luck to play there, dont know.
How full of yourself are you?
Lets enjoy other lesser games for a while and hope that the devs arent completely bat-sh!t crazy and we might be able to come back to a half decent game and mod the shit out of it to make it playable again.
They must be working towards f2p because this http://steamcharts.com/app/4920#1m is not what improving player retention looks like
Most of the players on NS2 don't give a damn about how their opponent moves/dodges. They might even do 190 damages to him, they wouldn't care, they'd only look at his healthbar. Without heathbars, they wouldn't know since most of the players aren't experienced Marines, so he might have done any damage number, he wouldn't pay attention to that. It's either dead or alive from their point of view.
Healthbars bring two major things to me: you do not need to communicate with your mates, one bullet is enough to find out how much HPs the enemy has, so why would I spend time asking my mates? That's terrible since bad communication was always a problem in this game, and a proper round relies on that communication. It's not helping.
And I'm afraid to say so but it increases your tracking. Once I was able to hit my enemy once, it becomes easy to track that Alien since those shiny colors are easier to track than the classic and dark Alien hues. Yes, you need to hit it at least once, but that's not that hard, is it? If your aim is awful, it won't make you an awesome Marine, but it'll help, a bit. Another downside, is that you may start to become worse at tracking Aliens before their healthbars appear. You know, you get used to it so hitting your enemy the very first time might become harder. You do not need stats about it, that's only logic.
But not everyone is you and not everyone plays like you...
Dude, we are not emotial. Several arguments has been put forth against it, while little for it. I don't understand why its so hard to comprehend.
You keep repeating that we are subjective and emotional, and its only our opinion when people are writing ARGUMENTS against it. How do YOU justify HP bars?
Heh !
I'm not always talking specifically to you
I recommend you take a look at these threads again:
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/143782/ns2free2play#latest
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/142208/what-should-be-done-about-the-health-bar#latest
Also the title of this thread:
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/144029/people-are-too-stupid-to-play-ns2-make-an-official-alternative-game-mode-already#latest
Sir, please step away from the gorge with your hands behind your head.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2302322/#Comment_2302322
I think that post and video does a lot to explain that health bars actually do provide an almost unconscious yet significant enough benefit.
Alien weakness stems from a few problems
Almost all maps are ridiculously difficult for aliens at player counts ≥ 9v9 because marines are simply better than skulks in 1v1 scenarios and so the ability for marine teams on these large servers to have almost a 1:1 marine:room ratio is obscenely strong. Aliens were supposed to have this mobility benefit over marines but it's diminished by the ability for marines to be everywhere at once.
Hive balance not being able to separate marine and alien skill levels is really an obvious point and I don't think I need to explain that.
I subscribe to Ironhorse's philosophy now of "shit isn't working with what we have, so we should change it to cater to what we have" and then build from there. Competitive is dead. I think the best thing IN THIS SCENARIO (because context is important), is to change things to help aliens because everyone is abysmal. Then when infrastructure is in place, release F2P, try and get 1000s of players back, and rebalance slowly but surely for top skill players.
I think it's really important to understand what the goal is, and then using that for context, appropriate decisions can be made. In my opinion, right now the game needs revitalizing and not fine tuning balance. Of course never go full retard and discard balancing for the top completely or you'll end up in a similar situation where marines really struggle to win because aliens are so easy for high skilled players to abuse.