Natural Regression
ubermensch
Join Date: 2002-12-31 Member: 11692Banned
Join Date: 2002-12-31 Member: 11692Banned
<div class="IPBDescription">3.2 + 3.1.3 = 3.3.3</div>Does anyone here remember when Nullsoft released Winamp version 3? It was regarded a failure and largely ignored by the community while preference for the 2.0 version remained. Their response was to release the next version with the gag title of "Winamp 5" which stood for "Winamp 2 + 3". Their philosophy with version 5 was to incorporate all the old and cherished aspects of version 2 with some of the new polish and well-received features of version 3. Thus, while the next version number would sequentially be 4, they chose the (somewhat gimmicky) version number 5 for its ability to symbolize the 2 + 3 synthesis.
Why couldn't this be done with NS? Why can't we just take a deep breath, look around, and say "alright, this did not turn out well, this is not what we expected it to be,"* and go back to what [edit]most[/edit] regard as superior?
What I'm proposing is a new official version of NS be released based on the balance and mechanics of 3.1.3 (things such as 2-hive armor, old style lerk and fade, smaller phasegate delay, etc.), but with the cosmetic and subtle mechanical changes of 3.2 (we'd keep things such as the prettier minimap and ghost structures and perhaps hive-based movement rushes). Just as Nullsoft went back to their roots (2) in their most recent version of Winamp (5), I think NS should go back to its roots (3.1.3) in the next version (my proposed NS 3.3.3, with "3.3.3" being a gag in the same vein as Winamp 5, its intent being to represent the 3.1.3 + 3.2 synthesis).
To summarize:
NS 3.1.3 : Winamp 2 (tried-and-true, loved by the community) :: NS 3.2 : Winamp 3 (widely disliked)
NS 3.3.3 will be our Winamp 5. The intent is to reclaim the original charm that everyone loved and admit our mistakes with 3.2, as Nullsoft did with Winamp 3.
* Aside: for the sake of brevity I've neglected the larger argument of why 3.2 is a failure and all-around less fun than 3.1.3, but I will cite <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=5210219892417604608&showtopic=100984" target="_blank">Blue_Mary's famous post</a> as quintessential reading for one who is concerned with the question "what's so bad about 3.2?"
Also, I realize the argument of what balance changes introduced in 3.2 should remain is a considerable one, but I'm ignoring it to keep this post concise. And I realize I wasted a lot of effort with the Winamp analogy for people who aren't familiar with it, but,.. you get the idea.
Why couldn't this be done with NS? Why can't we just take a deep breath, look around, and say "alright, this did not turn out well, this is not what we expected it to be,"* and go back to what [edit]most[/edit] regard as superior?
What I'm proposing is a new official version of NS be released based on the balance and mechanics of 3.1.3 (things such as 2-hive armor, old style lerk and fade, smaller phasegate delay, etc.), but with the cosmetic and subtle mechanical changes of 3.2 (we'd keep things such as the prettier minimap and ghost structures and perhaps hive-based movement rushes). Just as Nullsoft went back to their roots (2) in their most recent version of Winamp (5), I think NS should go back to its roots (3.1.3) in the next version (my proposed NS 3.3.3, with "3.3.3" being a gag in the same vein as Winamp 5, its intent being to represent the 3.1.3 + 3.2 synthesis).
To summarize:
NS 3.1.3 : Winamp 2 (tried-and-true, loved by the community) :: NS 3.2 : Winamp 3 (widely disliked)
NS 3.3.3 will be our Winamp 5. The intent is to reclaim the original charm that everyone loved and admit our mistakes with 3.2, as Nullsoft did with Winamp 3.
* Aside: for the sake of brevity I've neglected the larger argument of why 3.2 is a failure and all-around less fun than 3.1.3, but I will cite <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=5210219892417604608&showtopic=100984" target="_blank">Blue_Mary's famous post</a> as quintessential reading for one who is concerned with the question "what's so bad about 3.2?"
Also, I realize the argument of what balance changes introduced in 3.2 should remain is a considerable one, but I'm ignoring it to keep this post concise. And I realize I wasted a lot of effort with the Winamp analogy for people who aren't familiar with it, but,.. you get the idea.
Comments
When you are used to the changes you wont go back to 3.1 again.
Give it a chance, the NS team dident change NS because they thought it was to boring and then made something new. They changed NS so the game got even better.
My 50cent <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
//Jydskatomkraft aka Pink_Panther
I've been playing 3-5 days a week for at least a month now, it has settled in and I (like lots of others) just don't like it.
In fact, I've seen some new good NS servers show up with a healthy admin presence and they've flourished.
NS has had a pretty impressive lifecycle, all things considered. I'm hoping for a <i>lot</i> of newness from NS2, or as could happen with CS:S, a lot of people play it, and after a week or two realize this is the same game they got tired of before and let it sink to the bottom of their steam lists. (Now you can think of CS:S as a little dwarf star slowly sucking material from it's binary red giant friend!) New game modes, that have more depth than combat, are pretty much a neccessity.
Regression as you've suggested, is the <i>last</i> thing NS needs. Right now those fade changes that some of you hate have opened up a new area of the game for players such as myself (and if I wasn't so prone to lag spiking, I'd do it more). 3.1.3 went on too long with the same players playing the same roles doing the same things. Trust me on this: The "better" memories you have of 3.1 are just like the "better" memories I have of 1.04: they ignore the worse aspects of the version. Your "famous" Blue Mary post, despite all the words, offered not a single bit of insight into why 3.2 is actually worse than 3.1. Most of the so called problems mentioned there have been around since 2.0. Short games? Decided in the first 5 minutes? No power shifts? This is all nonsense. In this regard, from my experience, also speaking purely as a pubber, 3.2 is better than 3.1 so far. (And I'm not going to read umpteen-many pages to look for some other point finally dragged out.)
I mean really, if you can't adapt to the changes within a game called Natural Selection, you're doomed anyway. No, this sounds to me like it is more jaded players that can't accept that they've done everything and <i>need</i> to move on. NS needs fresh blood, and 3.2 is right the step in that direction. If you're going to be miserable about it, step aside and let someone new in.
we need SmoodCroozn in here, STAT
I'm calling it a given, that 3.2 is a failure, based on the decreasing pub server activity <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
NS is at the end of it's lifespan. Server activity has been this way since 3.1. Don't drag this version down because of the overall trend.
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and the noteworthy number of forum complaints on it.
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This is normal for every version of every game. Show me a game that hasn't had people ###### and moan about a patch and I'll show you a game that hardly gets played at all.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The decreasing number of players overall speaks for itself really (though it's impossible to prove it's 3.2 related and we could say it was just the natural progression, it's not hard to believe that 3.2 drove them away given how many complaints there are here and on other ns community forums)
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<a href="http://nsoldfogies.dyndns.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7279" target="_blank">Read less of the bad and more of the good.</a> Vocal minorities are the ones complaining. The ones who like it are busy playing. Trust me on this.
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I've been playing 3-5 days a week for at least a month now, it has settled in and I (like lots of others) just don't like it.
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And you can <i>honestly</i> tell me that if we were still playing 3.1, you'd be happy? Face it, you'd be complaining about something in that too. Not to make it sound like I think you're a whiner by any means, but I'm not convinced any of you people would be happy still playing 3.1. It's <i>easy</i> to just complain about something you don't like. Just like the news is full of bad stuff. All the happy people just feel content to go about their lives and not announce their happiness over and over again. Unlike the unhappy people.
And... gah... I give up. This is why I shouldn't go slumming into this forum... threads like these are so depressing. Go on, have your way. I give up!
Why couldn't this be done with NS? Why can't we just take a deep breath, look around, and say "alright, this did not turn out well, this is not what we expected it to be,"* and go back to what we all regard as superior?
What I'm proposing is a new official version of NS be released based on the balance and mechanics of 3.1.3 (things such as 2-hive armor, old style lerk and fade, smaller phasegate delay, etc.), but with the cosmetic and subtle mechanical changes of 3.2 (we'd keep things such as the prettier minimap and ghost structures and perhaps hive-based movement rushes).
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It's my humble opinion that the only people left who can't lerk or fade in 3.2 couldn't lerk or fade in 3.1 either. +movement makes fading 20 (official number) times easier to get into. If your complaint is one player dominance in this version, I have absolutely -no- idea why you would point to 3.1 where it was even easier to rock on aliens. All 2-hive armor is going to do is get bad players who deserve to have died anyway live in red hp more often. BFD. Stop dropping sensory on the <BAD> server. 3.2 is an improvement.
Also <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=8888732760641666048&showtopic=100886&st=80" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....00886&st=80</a>
That thread died...negativity is so much easier to post about, ya know?
i dont know what youve been smoking but id like to get some of it too
But doctor, this patient has already had 20cc's of ubermensch, if we inject SmoodCroozn they could react and create inflammation !!
It's my humble opinion that the only people left who can't lerk or fade in 3.2 couldn't lerk or fade in 3.1 either. +movement makes fading 20 (official number) times easier to get into. If your complaint is one player dominance in this version, I have absolutely -no- idea why you would point to 3.1 where it was even easier to rock on aliens. All 2-hive armor is going to do is get bad players who deserve to have died anyway live in red hp more often. BFD. Stop dropping sensory on the <BAD> server. 3.2 is an improvement.
Also <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=8888732760641666048&showtopic=100886&st=80" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....00886&st=80</a>
That thread died...negativity is so much easier to post about, ya know?
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LOL HES RIGHT!
I'm calling it a given, that 3.2 is a failure, based on the decreasing pub server activity and the noteworthy number of forum complaints on it. The decreasing number of players overall speaks for itself really (though it's impossible to prove it's 3.2 related and we could say it was just the natural progression, it's not hard to believe that 3.2 drove them away given how many complaints there are here and on other ns community forums)
I've been playing 3-5 days a week for at least a month now, it has settled in and I (like lots of others) just don't like it.
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Well just because you said so, 3.2 is a failure. Pack it up Dev/QA team, apparently the game is now awful.
Also note that 3.1.3 had many horrendous problems fixed by 3.2, it was not "loved" by any fashion of the word.
3.2+3.13 = 6.33
L2ADD spastic
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hahahaha
So far I've gotten the requisite responses, I knew that would be a phase of this thread, I bothered to put this up for people who feel like Blue_Mary who have yet to chime in (and probably never will because <i>They Left!</i>)
This has been running around my head a lot lately though, as pub gaming has just simply been becoming more and more stale--more stale than 3.1.3 had ever gotten. I don't play in BAD or teamplay etc. btw. Also, with ANSL and ENSL flatlining as they are right now, I don't care (and further don't see how anyone else could outside of for nostalgia's sake) about how mechanics affect 6v6 clan style play because <i>There's Nobody Playing That Way Anymore!</i>
I mostly wanted to toss this out into the public discourse. I've done that, to my great peril, and, I suppose, have gotten what I asked for from this community (unending spasms of sardonic derision).
Don't make this out as some personal grievance, for what it's worth to those of you accusing me of being a bad-whiner (dogg), I am always on top of the scoreboard. It's just that I feel the bordem and staleness of gameplay in every role I play anymore, and in a more pronounced way than I ever did in 3.1.3.
hahahaha
So far I've gotten the requisite responses, I knew that would be a phase of this thread, I bothered to put this up for people who feel like Blue_Mary who have yet to chime in (and probably never will because <i>They Left!</i>)
This has been running around my head a lot lately though, as pub gaming has just simply been becoming more and more stale--more stale than 3.1.3 had ever gotten. I don't play in BAD or teamplay etc. btw. Also, with ANSL and ENSL flatlining as they are right now, I don't care (and further don't see how anyone else could outside of for nostalgia's sake) about how mechanics affect 6v6 clan style play because <i>There's Nobody Playing That Way Anymore!</i>
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Think you could mention some things liked Marv liked in 3.1? He seemed to dislike the way ns has gone since 2.0 and now decided to post it without giving it too much of a thought or arguments. 3.2 _has_ more midgame than 3.1 (or at least <24 plr servers have). 3.2 is less about one fade or lerk soloing the whole marine team.
There might be lots of people starting to play the game now if it wasn't the hl1 engine.
Fade acceleration halved
Lerk maximum speed and climb rate reduced
Hives can now be used to teleport to other hives
Marine RT health reduced by 500
Structures under attack flash red on minimap
Webs take time to harden
+movement
Onos charge knocks back other aliens, active only on +attack and +movement
DCs don't stack, heal structures more
JP cost decreased, research time increased
2 hive armor removed
PG cooldown decreased
YEAH THESE CHANGES TOTALLY RUINED NS
The fact is that very few of 3.2's changes had a large impact on the game. It serves merely as a scapegoat for people's lack of ability.
I just can't understand your problems with such "minor" changes...
But in general its not a bad version given that the good points are well worth it.
The fade got slightly nerfed at the very very high end of the skill curve, but it gained other abilities as well, and the other abilities the fade gained have brought many new talented fades to the pubbing scene. It always sucks when something gets dumbed down for the elite players, but if anything the fade change has actually had a positive effect on the rest of the community. I'm not as in touch with the high ranks as I used to be, but I find it hard to come right out and call the fade change a negative change...
The rest of the changes are generally made of pwn and win. 3.1.3 was ###### in comparison to this release for the most part. Hive 2 used to be so utterly dominating in pubs there was literally no game aside from both teams competing for second hive.
Those changes come together in subtle ways to alter the vast and unfathomable economies of the game. On paper a dozen changes might seem insignificant, but the only way you can appreciate them is by playing.
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This is one of the biggest problems with the public gamer feedback. "The game just went wrong" isn't the best feedback for making changes needed to improve the game. Clanners most often have a better understanding of the mechanics and so they can often point out the features they want to have changed.
I prefer the new blink and lerk since they make the alien gameplay more team orientated instead of a lifeform carryfest. I'd say some more action with lerking wouldn't hurt, but the good lerks probably know it better. Lerk really isn't a minor annoyance though. It takes some 2 seconds to bring marine below 80 hp requiring a medpack vs skulks. Cara and cele lerks can also pick out lone lmgs quite easily, I think.
Am I the only person thinking that the lerk nerf brought the lerk back into line of where it should be? Look at the facts here, in 3.1 early lerks (good ones) absolutely dominated anything and everything, including their direct counter - shotguns. Do you really think thats how lerks are supposed to be used? It got to the point where lerks the calibre of Sublime and phil barely used spore at all, instead using bite and crazy pancake movement instead because they found it to be more effective.
Compare that now to the 3.2 lerk, where if you go into a decent sized room against 2 LMGers who can aim - you die unless you have backup. The lerk is much more in line now to where imo it should be - a support unit. Lerks in this version will fly around and spore groups of marines draining armour and forcing them to waste res on meds, they'll steer way clear of any shotgunners, they'll pick off lone cappers, they'll only challenge groups of marines when they have backup in the form of fades and/or skulks, and in the latter case its a case of going in, pancaking around to draw fire from the skulks, and land a bite or two to weaken the marines before flying ou to heal and letting the skulks mop up.
The lerk is much less an earlygame glass cannon now, which took huge amounts of skill to master. Sure it still takes a lot of skill and practise to get the most out of it, but the lerk has come back to what it was for pretty much every version before 3.1 - it's about the thinking and the positioning and most of all <b>being in the right place at the right time</b>. The lerk nerf has done leaps and bounds in bringing the alien team back from highskilled players carrying their team in dominating roles (3.1 lerk/fade) and brought the team back to having to rely on good teamwork, which is imo where it should be.
Those changes come together in subtle ways to alter the vast and unfathomable economies of the game. On paper a dozen changes might seem insignificant, but the only way you can appreciate them is by playing.
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Really, they do? Then why don't you tell us how? Just saying "they come together in subtle ways and alter the game" doesn't mean anything. Come up with some specific ways in which 3.2 sucks ###### and maybe we'll actually listen to you. Otherwise, FLAME ON!
Really, they do? Then why don't you tell us how? Just saying "they come together in subtle ways and alter the game" doesn't mean anything. Come up with some specific ways in which 3.2 sucks ###### and maybe we'll actually listen to you. Otherwise, FLAME ON!
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I purposefully didn't pinpoint any specific issues so I could avoid the likes of you. What you're saying translates to "give me ammo to shoot you with." It would just devolve into a quote-rebut-quote-rebut clusterfsck like usual. I just wanted the general idea of the possibility of a "rollback" on the discussion table.
I purposefully didn't pinpoint any specific issues so I could avoid the likes of you. What you're saying translates to "give me ammo to shoot you with." It would just devolve into a quote-rebut-quote-rebut clusterfsck like usual. I just wanted the general idea of the possibility of a "rollback" on the discussion table.
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You pretty much automatically lose the argument then.
Yes yes, lets roll back a version of NS becuase this one doesn't "feel right."
I purposefully didn't pinpoint any specific issues so I could avoid the likes of you. What you're saying translates to "give me ammo to shoot you with." It would just devolve into a quote-rebut-quote-rebut clusterfsck like usual. I just wanted the general idea of the possibility of a "rollback" on the discussion table.
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Without specific issues to identify there's no reason to even consider a "rollback". If you think any issues that you come up with can be shot down, then they're not really issues, are they?