Ns Evolution Faster And Harder
CplDavis
I hunt the arctic Snonos Join Date: 2003-01-09 Member: 12097Members
I hunt the arctic Snonos Join Date: 2003-01-09 Member: 12097Members
<div class="IPBDescription">but at what cost?</div> "Quick you fool Ungorge yourself!"
I laughed when I heard this, not becasue I thougt it was stupid, but becasue its funny. The Online gaming Community has made its own language. Im not talking about "elite" sp34k Im talking about the simple things .
Its a cylcle of constant time mangment. Its efficientcy.
For example,
Way back when, you might have heard: "We dont need more than one gorge, gestate back!"
As NS and its "regulars" progressed
so did the language. things gotta go faster!
"We dont need 2 gorges gestate back!"
to
"We dont need 2 gorges, go back!"
to present day.
"ungorge now!"
The language of NS can greatly be compaired with the overall game in many people's opinions.
I remember playing NS in its first week. Besides me peeling my hands of the mouse due to the cronic addiction I had quickly developed for the game, (I still go through withdrawl when i can t play for a day) I noticed something different.
The rounds lasted FOREVER. Well forever in comparison to the other games at the time like CS and DoD.
Now unless I was on crack the whole time and I was hallucinating, if you were in a normal public server, a lot of those early rounds could possibly take a good hour or more for a team to win.
Now I sit back and compaire this time with today's NS.
People today especialy the marines are in a God like Uber Rush throught the whole game. It is not uncommon to see the fate of the round determined by the first 2 minuets in NS. Now I am talking about the public servers not the passworded regulars only servers here.
Remember that when any topic is described in these forums you have to compaire between the public servers and the private ones because the differences in player opinion will stagger you. I play in the public servers 90% of the time so thats where i get these ideas from. Dont get me wrong though. I am fully aware that this game is pretty well balanced. If this little thing called Teamwork used, the marines will win just as many times as the aliens. Teamwork seems to be lacking in the public servers (for the most part) so that explaines a part of it.
But anyways im going on here, back to the point. Regardless of whether you play in puplic or privet servers, I think many could agree that the some of the changes in NS have inconspicuously or unintentionaly changed the game pace. The game is getting more and more faced paced. If you make one wrong choice, if you place one wrong building at the wrong time, it can lost you dearly. No wonder the most popular team stratedgies are
A. Marine relocation at start
B. Tech rush
or in terms of the Kharaa
God forbid that gorge build a sensory chamber before a defense chamber.
Now not that these stratedgies are right or wrong (thats for other posts) but it seems that with this faster pace, people are severly narrowing down the playing options availible to them. In the old NS versions, it was not uncommon to see either team win by utilising wide a variety of stratedgies. Now in the majority of the servers out there, (the public ones, which then also make up the majority of the NS gaming community) we see a constant repitition of same game outcome after same game outcome, becasue everyone is using the same stratedgy after the same stratedy.Who ever conrtols 2 hives first is the winner in many public servers. Controling 2 hives in the origional NS ment your team could take a breather for a few mineuts.
What i want to know is that do you players out there think this is agood thing or a bad thing in terms of the games ambience and indivuality?
I laughed when I heard this, not becasue I thougt it was stupid, but becasue its funny. The Online gaming Community has made its own language. Im not talking about "elite" sp34k Im talking about the simple things .
Its a cylcle of constant time mangment. Its efficientcy.
For example,
Way back when, you might have heard: "We dont need more than one gorge, gestate back!"
As NS and its "regulars" progressed
so did the language. things gotta go faster!
"We dont need 2 gorges gestate back!"
to
"We dont need 2 gorges, go back!"
to present day.
"ungorge now!"
The language of NS can greatly be compaired with the overall game in many people's opinions.
I remember playing NS in its first week. Besides me peeling my hands of the mouse due to the cronic addiction I had quickly developed for the game, (I still go through withdrawl when i can t play for a day) I noticed something different.
The rounds lasted FOREVER. Well forever in comparison to the other games at the time like CS and DoD.
Now unless I was on crack the whole time and I was hallucinating, if you were in a normal public server, a lot of those early rounds could possibly take a good hour or more for a team to win.
Now I sit back and compaire this time with today's NS.
People today especialy the marines are in a God like Uber Rush throught the whole game. It is not uncommon to see the fate of the round determined by the first 2 minuets in NS. Now I am talking about the public servers not the passworded regulars only servers here.
Remember that when any topic is described in these forums you have to compaire between the public servers and the private ones because the differences in player opinion will stagger you. I play in the public servers 90% of the time so thats where i get these ideas from. Dont get me wrong though. I am fully aware that this game is pretty well balanced. If this little thing called Teamwork used, the marines will win just as many times as the aliens. Teamwork seems to be lacking in the public servers (for the most part) so that explaines a part of it.
But anyways im going on here, back to the point. Regardless of whether you play in puplic or privet servers, I think many could agree that the some of the changes in NS have inconspicuously or unintentionaly changed the game pace. The game is getting more and more faced paced. If you make one wrong choice, if you place one wrong building at the wrong time, it can lost you dearly. No wonder the most popular team stratedgies are
A. Marine relocation at start
B. Tech rush
or in terms of the Kharaa
God forbid that gorge build a sensory chamber before a defense chamber.
Now not that these stratedgies are right or wrong (thats for other posts) but it seems that with this faster pace, people are severly narrowing down the playing options availible to them. In the old NS versions, it was not uncommon to see either team win by utilising wide a variety of stratedgies. Now in the majority of the servers out there, (the public ones, which then also make up the majority of the NS gaming community) we see a constant repitition of same game outcome after same game outcome, becasue everyone is using the same stratedgy after the same stratedy.Who ever conrtols 2 hives first is the winner in many public servers. Controling 2 hives in the origional NS ment your team could take a breather for a few mineuts.
What i want to know is that do you players out there think this is agood thing or a bad thing in terms of the games ambience and indivuality?
Comments
Back when I played SC I could spend hours with friends to find a way to counter the "six zergling rush" as a protoss. Perfecting build startegys for hours and hours.
And if you check the forums from say a 2 months back you find the same discussions going on here. People count resources and perfect build orders. And with it they lose flexibilty.
One of the reasons I stopped playing SC was a match that made me open my eyes to what was happening.
For once I didn´t rush or use a well thought out tactic. I played randomly just to see what worked and what didn´t. I was really looking for inspiration to make a new uber tactic but then I noticed something. My opponents plan didn´t work. Mostly because he had counted on me doing something just as uber as he was doing. This had him stunned. So what does he do?? Change his tactic? Adapt to the new situation? Nope. For a full half hour he probes my defences until he finds a spot where his plan will work. He could have taken me out in a hundred diffrent ways alot quicker but was so locked in his thinking that it probably never occured to him.
I thinks it´s going to happen with NS aswell. It is allready happening. Luckely the troops are still played by other people so I don´t think it will be as severe as in other RTS games... but still.
Thanatos.
Historically, there's only two ways to fix this:
1. Reduce complexity of the game, to simplify fine-tuning and balancing. Think Go, or Quake deathmatch.
2. Increate the combinatorial complexity of the game, such that there's always new, untested strategies available to players. Think Advanced Squad Leader, or the SimCity games.
DO NOT BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT.
Increacing the complexity would definately help.
DO NOT BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT.
One of the best things that Blizzard has been doing with WCIII is nerfing units. These units are usually central in certain tactics. Think how powerful the Shamen rush was months ago. Then blizz put a patch out and that strat went down the hole.
DO NOT BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT.
Also an influx of new players may help to increace the viable strats out there.
DO NOT BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT.
LISTEN TO A COMMS EXPERIMENTAL TACTICS. All the strats that are common were experimental, not all worked. Think of the first time the comm refused to put a tfac in base. I couldnt believe it.
DO NOT BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT.
This all are design flaws(What blockhead decided that flying/umbra/acid rocket takes sooooooo much adrenaline so that you are forced to take movement 2.) and hopefully they will get fixed in 1.1 but until then expect a lot of marine rushes and the D-M-S build order. Another flaw that reduces the available tactics is the lack of counters. In traditional RPG you have counters to each unit but not in NS. For example if you would have 2 armor upgrades at the arms lab one like it is now and the other that reduces acid rocket damage by 80% the comm could choose to give troops better protection against bites or acid rocket which would greatly improve gameplay since the aliens must counter to that tactic. Same for turrets.Choose siege gun or immunity against acid rockets. Would make them more usefull at 2 hives and force the aliens to do something different than rocket spam.
NS is most fun when playing obscenely long games, when fades and HA duke it out, etc
Similarly, if you play marine and you see a sensory chamber or cloaked alien early on, IMMEDIATELY warn your team, and don't feel too confident you have a sure win. Sure, if you can get to a hive and fortify it, aliens with only cloaking probably will never take it back. But if there are a few skulks who know how to use cloaking properly on the server, geting to that hive to fortify it will be hell if the comm doesn't scan often.
and they have HA with 576 and so on.
I am looking for the Dev team to increase the complexity whilst reducing the difficulty. But that would take too long to discuss here. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I've been playing NS for a while now, and I think it happens with every game, you get to a point where it's not fast enough for you because you've become so accustomed to it, that you start to find the usual pace a bit sluggish.
'I want to get lots of multi-kills, and I want them now!'. Even the start-up screen seems to stay on the screen too long for me nowadays. I don't even bother to decide which team I'm joining, I just run into the nearest portal.
The thing you're saying about language, like 'ungorge', yeah funny stuff, made me laugh. I wonder what people who have just started playing NS think about all this, let alone understand the jargon. The other day, I went temporary gorge to get a res node, and another gorge just told me 'f*** off'.
Sometimes, the pace of the game is so fast, and the amount of work that is required to win it.. it's even stressful just thinking about it.
I reckon at this rate, we'll all be suffering NS related stress-disorders.
I think it was much more fun when NS first came out. Noone knew what to do or where to go, so the games could often be 1-2 hr long. Nowdays people know the best tactics so they can end the game much faster. I prefer the long even games rather than the rushes we see on most public servers.
TFAC TFAC theyre spikin the tfac!
their sieging the ocs's drop dcs under hive
everyone go cara/celeriskulk
mc's up, get adren fades
...need i go on?
OMG IT'S THE 7TH SIGN! THE END IS NIGH!!!
Heh. Great posts fellas, keep it going. This is very interesting reading, and I may weigh in a bit later with my thoughts as well...
I'm afraid thats a critical question. Yes they should have done. Espcially twice in a row. Although things like that do become more likely in smaller games.
No, I do not F4. Unless marines are spawncamping alot, but lets not discuss that, it'll just be hellish flames.