aeroripperJoin Date: 2005-02-25Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
edited December 2010
Game will be great in time, though it will probably take 2 years to fully get there. At its current state:
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b><!--coloro:#98FB98--><span style="color:#98FB98"><!--/coloro--><!--coloro:#00FF00--><span style="color:#00FF00"><!--/coloro-->Positives<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--></b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--> <ul><li>Great lighting engine, captures the "NS" vibe perfectly</li><li>Great artwork/models/sounds/music/level design (looking forward to biodome)</li><li>All aliens will eventually perform different, but complementary roles</li><li>New fade is cool </li><li>Powergrid/Infestation macro gameplay</li><li>Commanders on both sides countering the moves of the other, and directing the flow of the game</li><li>Unified res system should help balance the game</li><li>Tech point system turns the game into a game long battle for territory instead of devolving into marine turtles, which usually meant a frustrating loss for an alien team that owned 90% of the map for most of the game.</li></ul> <!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro--><b><!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->Negatives<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--></b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><ul><li>Network lag still making game relatively unplayable/annoying</li><li>Low fps, even with good hardware</li><li>Fade blink is difficult. Should experiment with not facing enemies so user has total control of where they're going. Or make it only face marines, not crates, world objects, or marine structures. Escaping a firefight is incredibly frustrating. </li><li>Gorge made obsolete by alien commander. Needs to be made important (and loved) again. Ideally the gorge and alien comm should be buddies, whereas one will not function very well without the other. The team needs to rely on the alien comm/gorge partnership to succeed. </li><li>Multiple commanders per team. Needs to feel less like an "afterthought" and more "integral and mapped out feature". Marines need a militarish leader comm, aliens should have a loose/distributed commanding style. Any additional comms on the marine side should strictly perform support roles to the top dog comm. This may be a very hard feature to implement well.</li><li>Lots of usability issues, but these will get sorted in time.</li><li>Shadows look blocky and incredibly low res at times. I think this comes from shadow quality settings on certain lights for performance reasons, but hopefully this can be improved while keep performance reasonable.</li></ul>
1. <i>Graphics:</i> Really digging the dynamic lighting, etc. (THAT IS, if the abysmal FPS issue gets resolved. Remember, playability > prettyness).
<b>Negatives: </b> 1. <i>Alien comms:</i> This is just retarded and should be removed immediately. This single-handedly obliterated the uniqueness of each race and, therefore, NS. 2. <i>Multiple comms:</i> Can you imagine those noobs and a-holes on public servers ruining things for everyone? Pass... 3. <i>The fact that playing marines or aliens feel exactly the same (unlike NS1):</i> Refer to #1 and #4. 4. <i>Drifters/MACs:</i> Cool-looking, but detracts from teamplay. Comm basically plays their own individual RTS games while everyone else is doing their thing. Where's the teamwork people? (BTW, the drifters look cheap and out-of-place in the game). 5. <i>Gorges/Lerks are useless now:</i> Refer to #1 and #4. 6. <i>Guns are not assigned to specific people:</i> I liked earning my presents. One of the biggest motivations for contributing to the team (building RTs, etc.)
Shotgun sucks currently (to ineffective and the dull sound seems fitting for its lack of damage).
Assault rifle sound sucks. Too drowned out. Pls just copy any gun in bad company 2 for the sound. Also the reload animation seems to long. And i could use more then simply 5 extra magazines. (how about 30 magazines?). Also 50 rounds seems to little considering the lack of a HMG, so how about 100 round magazines. Also the rifle seems verrry weak. At the very least can it be 5x damage against structures???
Hydras. Please remove them until the lag problems are fixed.
Whips. Please nerf their armor.
Alien-Structure spamming. Please prevent this.
I never seem to have time to drop meds and ammo for my team or set objectives. Perhaps a medic bot can help keep the marines armed in the field.
Where's the handheld welder???!!!
Why is the second cc so hard to acquire (if not built in the first 4 seconds of the game)... should be possible to drop it anywhere like in a vent. (Or allow multiple people to enter the 1 cc in order to perform a multi-commander role).
I miss phase gates.
Aliens rage quitting because the marines are winning, just got gl, or are 10 seconds away from destroying the last hive.
Sorry to put the only (non-dev) off style post in (and yes I know I'm not a moderator BUT), the OP asked for <b>THREE</b> positives and <b>THREE</b> negatives (or more, but the point is balanced), not for people list their personal grievances, come on guys, there's plenty of threads you can do that in, try and keep this one balanced.
Positive: 1. Lerks getting spikes again 2. Aliens getting more toys to play with 3. Visually the game looks great sofar 4. New fade blink is cool but I guess large rooms wont really be allowed anymore Im guessing.
Negative: 1. Multiple coms = clusterfack(serioulsy need to tie macs/drfiters to x com chair/hive 2. Smaller maps (cant stand how small everything is now.) 3. Reduced role of individual marine players (still dont like that all I can do on marine now is shoot things. if thats all I wanted from a game I would have never played ns1, hell Id still be playing cod clones. This goes for the gorge now too, as it is now hes almost completely useless). 4. Just the overall feel of the game sofar. Game feel "small". Like lego ns. Doesnt have the overwheling feeling that NS had (in a scifi game like this overwhelming is a good thing imo). Which confuses me because ns1 was influenced by movies like aliens (hell even the ns1 trailer was inspired by aliens). And now the game has gone in a completely opposite direction. The game feels like both teams are exactly the same now except one team has guns.
+ Toolset Engine, Editor, LUA, Builder, etc. great for iterating and building new content. + Art Style and Ideas + UW Team + Build 156 huge jump in functionality and playability + Blink did not disappoint.
Negatives
- Need better client side prediction. Your animations look good in the viewer, the game is more playable but stuttering. - Major content not complete. Onos, DI, etc. - Balance - Polish
slayer20Killed a man once.Join Date: 2007-12-13Member: 63157Members, Reinforced - Shadow
edited December 2010
Positives: - Blink is awesome (going to take some getting used to though...) - Being able to get my own guns. I'm still a little iffy about it, but it'd take a lot more weight off the Commander having to drop weapons to players.
Negatives: - I'm really not liking the symmetry of the game. (Alien commander basically) - I miss the magical ability of the Commander placing structures. It's lame having to escort MACs around outside the Marine Start. (Really who likes escort missions?) I think the Commander should be able to drop structures in areas that are powered. - Alien commander should be removed. - It feels like Skulks are really hard to hit. It might just be because it's in beta, but when I was playing Skulk, I could easily rack up 10 kills without dieing. That's something I wasn't able to do in NS1.
Positive: - The game looks very nice. - Like the details in walls, like the rocky surface behind fences. Not just a texture, but real polygons giving it some depth. - Finally you can see the flash lights of other marines. Now you can actually use the flash light as a tool for the whole team. And it has a very nice cinematic touch to it. - The blink effect for the fade looks absolutely great.
Negative: - Still hard to aim at fast moving aliens. Although much better each build. Same goes for network stuttering, prediction errors and framerates. - Some shadows are really low resolution (at least on my machine), while in previous builds that wasn't the case. And the dynamic shadows is one of the strong points of the engine. - Immediately disappearing corpses. - I miss being able to build and weld structures. It would be nice if letting a marine build a structure would be somewhat faster than a MAC.
- Engine is amazing, never seen lighting used like this in a game before. - UWE itself. How many games of this calibre are made out of the love for PC gaming. The progress so far (and the way it is rapidly accelerating) really shows the work ethic at UWE and the advantages of having your own engine. - Power grid / DI add a new level to gameplay that AFAIK hasn't been seen before in an FPS. The emergent gameplay that will come from this will be the core of NS2. - I've already had games that remind me of why NS1 was so good and the NS2HD vids are already selling the game to my friends. - It's Natural Selection 2 ffs :)
Negative:
- Gorge doesn't seem to have a well defined role yet, they can be useful but they currently aren't vital like in NS1. They need to have some unique and important job that isn't already provided by the alien comm. Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture yet as it's still in Beta. - Fade blink can be tricky to use when you're trying to GTFO of an area and end up pointing towards a structure. - I'm hoping release maps will the same size as NS1 maps.
- Game looks Beautiful - Skulk vs lmg marine is still freakin awesome - New abilities should be fun - cant wait for dynamic infestation omg drools
Negative
- It's not ns1 with new graphics(this is more of an inbetween than a negative) - maps are very blah other than tram - Spawn time /resource collection rate is still too fast(havent tested 157 yet we will see)
<u>Positives:</u> +Power grid system is awesome, really adds an excellent atmosphere especially the complete blackout following node destruction +Dynamic lighting! Especially like the individual flashlight DL, definitely perfect for NS. Really like the effects around a hive (more evident when power is off). Looks v. ethereal +Fade blink animation is cool, definitely makes fades more challenging to combat
<u>Negatives:</u> -Map size is <u><i>way</i></u> too small+compact; you don't get any of that NS atmosphere and suspense, because you know that any room you walk into be almost 100% likely to have aliens/marines in it or approaching. I think the issue is that the player 'density' over the maps is just too high, especially once you've got over a dozen players on the server it just gets team deathmatch-like rather than bursts of squad combat, I reckon increase the map sizes nearer to that of NS1. -More ambient sound to help build atmosphere and suspense. Kinda like how ns_ayumi had these haunting ambient sounds playing through it, or how ns_bast+others had mechanical humming or electronic beeping, giving more life to the maps. Also hoping to see a more diverse range of colours over the maps - main qualm here is that currently most the maps seem to have roughly the same dynamic lighting colour per room, which makes them a bit monotonous and leaves each room looking the same -The starting MG for marines needs to sound a bit beefier and more satisfying. I know its only a starting gun but I expect people will be using it a lot so it should sound at least a little badass when you fire it.
Also if there are %$^# achievements in this game I'm gonna flip the fk out, achievements turn games straight into sh*t. Consider TF2 which is now a glorified hat collecting and achievement scoring game. What a joke - what happened to TFC? Teamwork? Bah. Achievements are a crutch that mediocre games use to increase their replayability. If a game is good, you'll <i>want</i> to replay it regardless. Hell NS1 is infinitely replayable because every game is so different.
<u>Positives:</u> The visuals are fantastic! Including the atmosphere with the power nodes shutting down and lighting effects. Honestly, if the aliens got a sort of nightvision and the rooms didnt turn red on power node death, it would be such an awesome experience with all the marines crawling in slowly with flashlights. But the balance would probably be horrid. oh well. I just love how unlike NS1 I no longer have to say "look past the graphics, the game play is amazing..."
The new fade blink mechanic is so much fun as well, the auto aim is a little bit of a turn off from a control standpoint but i probably spent an hour just blinking around for the fun of it. Can't wait to try it once the hit-reg is fully optimized and the GL damage gets tuned down a bit (downloading the patch as i type :d )
Also love the current Lerks iteration (minus the still awkward flight). It's roll of area control and denial from NS1 is perfectly preserved and still maintains the skill curve of knowing when to expose yourself for offense or simply manipulating the splash radius of spores to be able to do damage without exposing yourself.
<u>Negatives</u> The role of the alien commander is still incredibly 'iffy' to me. One of my favorite elements of NS1 is how the aliens actually acted like a hive-mind, working together but without an actual defined leader. The commander role has also invalidated use of the gorge through the power of the crag (and the current fault of hydras lagging the servers). I'd love to see the alien commander role and drifters scrapped, because having all the buildings available to the commander be placed on the gorge would let it be even more dynamic a life form in NS2 then it was in NS1.
A small other minor complaint i have would be the lack of actual things to do as the Commander. It's probably my time spent in competitive RTS (Dawn of War, AoE and most notably Starcraft) that without having to command and micro the marines, the lategame commander role drastically slows down once all the tech paths are complete. You go from managing the timings on structures and streamlining upgrades to med/ammo and turrets for zone control. Maybe once the game gets more developed the MACs will have a bigger micro role with the tech points (expanding maps to create more tech points would really help in this regard), but it still leaves the issue that after a certain point in time, you really begin to stockpile resources without an effecient and practical way to spend them.
All in all I love the game hundreds times more then its turn-offs. Keep up the great work! I already feel my special-edition pre-order was well worth the money :)
Positives - The graphics and general atmosphere (the lighting is godly) - The various new structures, abilities, weapons, upgrades, etc. (new toys rock) - Fade's new blink mechanic and effect - Screaming, flailing hives (burn you slimy hellspawn!) - General subtle animations when a structure is deployed, destroyed, etc. - Powernodes! - Lerk flight (didn't lerk a ton in NS1, but I find it very fun and intuitive in NS2). 1 exception (see Negatives) - New turret mechanics - The flashlights are pure sex, if sex was a really awesome flashlight (and it is) - Marines buying their own weapons
Negatives (although I feel odd supplying any since it's still in development) - Still no sign or real word on dynamic infestation. Mostly just worried it'll get cut from the game. - Comms seem very reluctant to be constantly in the chair/hive (unsure if it's just ADHD people or something game-mechanic-wise) - Ambiguous gorge role (remains to be seen though, since not everything is in yet) - Drifter spam and the difficulty of destroying something that was just put down prior to its death (since it auto-builds) - Whip attack area seems oddly large based on its size and whipping animation - Only complaint with lerk flight is that it is difficult to land precisely in short distances. Jumping from one beam to another, even if very close, is abnormally difficult.
Don't Like : New command style, multiple comms / alien comm etc. Seems to be just diluting a strong concept instead of concentrating it. Rines 'buy' their guns? This ain't CS! Small maps / no minimap Size of structures, they are too big. The armoury shouldn't be bigger than the CC...
Positive: - great visuals - both models and maps - very nice atmosphere
Bad: - technical issues (due to lag/performance issues game is basically unplayable - compared to NS1) - less incentives for team cooperation. Game feels like FPS with detached RTS game played by commanders only. - loss of NS1 concepts like phase gate, turret factory, alien personal upgrades - gorges are no longer cute and important
Don't care yet (hope will be fixed): - balance issues - not yet implemented minimap
Comments
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b><!--coloro:#98FB98--><span style="color:#98FB98"><!--/coloro--><!--coloro:#00FF00--><span style="color:#00FF00"><!--/coloro-->Positives<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--></b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
<ul><li>Great lighting engine, captures the "NS" vibe perfectly</li><li>Great artwork/models/sounds/music/level design (looking forward to biodome)</li><li>All aliens will eventually perform different, but complementary roles</li><li>New fade is cool </li><li>Powergrid/Infestation macro gameplay</li><li>Commanders on both sides countering the moves of the other, and directing the flow of the game</li><li>Unified res system should help balance the game</li><li>Tech point system turns the game into a game long battle for territory instead of devolving into marine turtles, which usually meant a frustrating loss for an alien team that owned 90% of the map for most of the game.</li></ul>
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro--><b><!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->Negatives<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--></b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><ul><li>Network lag still making game relatively unplayable/annoying</li><li>Low fps, even with good hardware</li><li>Fade blink is difficult. Should experiment with not facing enemies so user has total control of where they're going. Or make it only face marines, not crates, world objects, or marine structures. Escaping a firefight is incredibly frustrating. </li><li>Gorge made obsolete by alien commander. Needs to be made important (and loved) again. Ideally the gorge and alien comm should be buddies, whereas one will not function very well without the other. The team needs to rely on the alien comm/gorge partnership to succeed. </li><li>Multiple commanders per team. Needs to feel less like an "afterthought" and more "integral and mapped out feature". Marines need a militarish leader comm, aliens should have a loose/distributed commanding style. Any additional comms on the marine side should strictly perform support roles to the top dog comm. This may be a very hard feature to implement well.</li><li>Lots of usability issues, but these will get sorted in time.</li><li>Shadows look blocky and incredibly low res at times. I think this comes from shadow quality settings on certain lights for performance reasons, but hopefully this can be improved while keep performance reasonable.</li></ul>
1. <i>Graphics:</i> Really digging the dynamic lighting, etc. (THAT IS, if the abysmal FPS issue gets resolved. Remember, playability > prettyness).
<b>Negatives:
</b>
1. <i>Alien comms:</i> This is just retarded and should be removed immediately. This single-handedly obliterated the uniqueness of each race and, therefore, NS.
2. <i>Multiple comms:</i> Can you imagine those noobs and a-holes on public servers ruining things for everyone? Pass...
3. <i>The fact that playing marines or aliens feel exactly the same (unlike NS1):</i> Refer to #1 and #4.
4. <i>Drifters/MACs:</i> Cool-looking, but detracts from teamplay. Comm basically plays their own individual RTS games while everyone else is doing their thing. Where's the teamwork people? (BTW, the drifters look cheap and out-of-place in the game).
5. <i>Gorges/Lerks are useless now:</i> Refer to #1 and #4.
6. <i>Guns are not assigned to specific people:</i> I liked earning my presents. One of the biggest motivations for contributing to the team (building RTs, etc.)
The macs are revolutionizing the commanders job.
Glad the fps-stealing flash render is gone.
<b>Negative:</b>
Lag sucks currently (borderline unplayable).
FPS suck currently (borderline unplayable).
Shotgun sucks currently (to ineffective and the dull sound seems fitting for its lack of damage).
Assault rifle sound sucks. Too drowned out. Pls just copy any gun in bad company 2 for the sound. Also the reload animation seems to long. And i could use more then simply 5 extra magazines. (how about 30 magazines?). Also 50 rounds seems to little considering the lack of a HMG, so how about 100 round magazines. Also the rifle seems verrry weak. At the very least can it be 5x damage against structures???
Hydras. Please remove them until the lag problems are fixed.
Whips. Please nerf their armor.
Alien-Structure spamming. Please prevent this.
I never seem to have time to drop meds and ammo for my team or set objectives. Perhaps a medic bot can help keep the marines armed in the field.
Where's the handheld welder???!!!
Why is the second cc so hard to acquire (if not built in the first 4 seconds of the game)... should be possible to drop it anywhere like in a vent. (Or allow multiple people to enter the 1 cc in order to perform a multi-commander role).
I miss phase gates.
Aliens rage quitting because the marines are winning, just got gl, or are 10 seconds away from destroying the last hive.
1. Lerks getting spikes again
2. Aliens getting more toys to play with
3. Visually the game looks great sofar
4. New fade blink is cool but I guess large rooms wont really be allowed anymore Im guessing.
Negative:
1. Multiple coms = clusterfack(serioulsy need to tie macs/drfiters to x com chair/hive
2. Smaller maps (cant stand how small everything is now.)
3. Reduced role of individual marine players (still dont like that all I can do on marine now is shoot things. if thats all I wanted from a game I would have never played ns1, hell Id still be playing cod clones. This goes for the gorge now too, as it is now hes almost completely useless).
4. Just the overall feel of the game sofar. Game feel "small". Like lego ns. Doesnt have the overwheling feeling that NS had (in a scifi game like this overwhelming is a good thing imo). Which confuses me because ns1 was influenced by movies like aliens (hell even the ns1 trailer was inspired by aliens). And now the game has gone in a completely opposite direction. The game feels like both teams are exactly the same now except one team has guns.
+ Toolset Engine, Editor, LUA, Builder, etc. great for iterating and building new content.
+ Art Style and Ideas
+ UW Team
+ Build 156 huge jump in functionality and playability
+ Blink did not disappoint.
Negatives
- Need better client side prediction. Your animations look good in the viewer, the game is more playable but stuttering.
- Major content not complete. Onos, DI, etc.
- Balance
- Polish
- Blink is awesome (going to take some getting used to though...)
- Being able to get my own guns. I'm still a little iffy about it, but it'd take a lot more weight off the Commander having to drop weapons to players.
Negatives:
- I'm really not liking the symmetry of the game. (Alien commander basically)
- I miss the magical ability of the Commander placing structures. It's lame having to escort MACs around outside the Marine Start. (Really who likes escort missions?) I think the Commander should be able to drop structures in areas that are powered.
- Alien commander should be removed.
- It feels like Skulks are really hard to hit. It might just be because it's in beta, but when I was playing Skulk, I could easily rack up 10 kills without dieing. That's something I wasn't able to do in NS1.
All I can think of right now
- The game looks very nice.
- Like the details in walls, like the rocky surface behind fences. Not just a texture, but real polygons giving it some depth.
- Finally you can see the flash lights of other marines. Now you can actually use the flash light as a tool for the whole team. And it has a very nice cinematic touch to it.
- The blink effect for the fade looks absolutely great.
Negative:
- Still hard to aim at fast moving aliens. Although much better each build. Same goes for network stuttering, prediction errors and framerates.
- Some shadows are really low resolution (at least on my machine), while in previous builds that wasn't the case. And the dynamic shadows is one of the strong points of the engine.
- Immediately disappearing corpses.
- I miss being able to build and weld structures. It would be nice if letting a marine build a structure would be somewhat faster than a MAC.
- Engine is amazing, never seen lighting used like this in a game before.
- UWE itself. How many games of this calibre are made out of the love for PC gaming. The progress so far (and the way it is rapidly accelerating) really shows the work ethic at UWE and the advantages of having your own engine.
- Power grid / DI add a new level to gameplay that AFAIK hasn't been seen before in an FPS. The emergent gameplay that will come from this will be the core of NS2.
- I've already had games that remind me of why NS1 was so good and the NS2HD vids are already selling the game to my friends.
- It's Natural Selection 2 ffs :)
Negative:
- Gorge doesn't seem to have a well defined role yet, they can be useful but they currently aren't vital like in NS1. They need to have some unique and important job that isn't already provided by the alien comm. Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture yet as it's still in Beta.
- Fade blink can be tricky to use when you're trying to GTFO of an area and end up pointing towards a structure.
- I'm hoping release maps will the same size as NS1 maps.
- Game looks Beautiful
- Skulk vs lmg marine is still freakin awesome
- New abilities should be fun
- cant wait for dynamic infestation omg drools
Negative
- It's not ns1 with new graphics(this is more of an inbetween than a negative)
- maps are very blah other than tram
- Spawn time /resource collection rate is still too fast(havent tested 157 yet we will see)
+Power grid system is awesome, really adds an excellent atmosphere especially the complete blackout following node destruction
+Dynamic lighting! Especially like the individual flashlight DL, definitely perfect for NS. Really like the effects around a hive (more evident when power is off). Looks v. ethereal
+Fade blink animation is cool, definitely makes fades more challenging to combat
<u>Negatives:</u>
-Map size is <u><i>way</i></u> too small+compact; you don't get any of that NS atmosphere and suspense, because you know that any room you walk into be almost 100% likely to have aliens/marines in it or approaching. I think the issue is that the player 'density' over the maps is just too high, especially once you've got over a dozen players on the server it just gets team deathmatch-like rather than bursts of squad combat, I reckon increase the map sizes nearer to that of NS1.
-More ambient sound to help build atmosphere and suspense. Kinda like how ns_ayumi had these haunting ambient sounds playing through it, or how ns_bast+others had mechanical humming or electronic beeping, giving more life to the maps. Also hoping to see a more diverse range of colours over the maps - main qualm here is that currently most the maps seem to have roughly the same dynamic lighting colour per room, which makes them a bit monotonous and leaves each room looking the same
-The starting MG for marines needs to sound a bit beefier and more satisfying. I know its only a starting gun but I expect people will be using it a lot so it should sound at least a little badass when you fire it.
Also if there are %$^# achievements in this game I'm gonna flip the fk out, achievements turn games straight into sh*t. Consider TF2 which is now a glorified hat collecting and achievement scoring game. What a joke - what happened to TFC? Teamwork? Bah. Achievements are a crutch that mediocre games use to increase their replayability. If a game is good, you'll <i>want</i> to replay it regardless. Hell NS1 is infinitely replayable because every game is so different.
The visuals are fantastic! Including the atmosphere with the power nodes shutting down and lighting effects.
Honestly, if the aliens got a sort of nightvision and the rooms didnt turn red on power node death, it would be such an awesome experience with all the marines crawling in slowly with flashlights. But the balance would probably be horrid. oh well.
I just love how unlike NS1 I no longer have to say "look past the graphics, the game play is amazing..."
The new fade blink mechanic is so much fun as well, the auto aim is a little bit of a turn off from a control standpoint but i probably spent an hour just blinking around for the fun of it. Can't wait to try it once the hit-reg is fully optimized and the GL damage gets tuned down a bit (downloading the patch as i type :d )
Also love the current Lerks iteration (minus the still awkward flight). It's roll of area control and denial from NS1 is perfectly preserved and still maintains the skill curve of knowing when to expose yourself for offense or simply manipulating the splash radius of spores to be able to do damage without exposing yourself.
<u>Negatives</u>
The role of the alien commander is still incredibly 'iffy' to me. One of my favorite elements of NS1 is how the aliens actually acted like a hive-mind, working together but without an actual defined leader. The commander role has also invalidated use of the gorge through the power of the crag (and the current fault of hydras lagging the servers). I'd love to see the alien commander role and drifters scrapped, because having all the buildings available to the commander be placed on the gorge would let it be even more dynamic a life form in NS2 then it was in NS1.
A small other minor complaint i have would be the lack of actual things to do as the Commander. It's probably my time spent in competitive RTS (Dawn of War, AoE and most notably Starcraft) that without having to command and micro the marines, the lategame commander role drastically slows down once all the tech paths are complete. You go from managing the timings on structures and streamlining upgrades to med/ammo and turrets for zone control. Maybe once the game gets more developed the MACs will have a bigger micro role with the tech points (expanding maps to create more tech points would really help in this regard), but it still leaves the issue that after a certain point in time, you really begin to stockpile resources without an effecient and practical way to spend them.
All in all I love the game hundreds times more then its turn-offs. Keep up the great work! I already feel my special-edition pre-order was well worth the money :)
- The graphics and general atmosphere (the lighting is godly)
- The various new structures, abilities, weapons, upgrades, etc. (new toys rock)
- Fade's new blink mechanic and effect
- Screaming, flailing hives (burn you slimy hellspawn!)
- General subtle animations when a structure is deployed, destroyed, etc.
- Powernodes!
- Lerk flight (didn't lerk a ton in NS1, but I find it very fun and intuitive in NS2). 1 exception (see Negatives)
- New turret mechanics
- The flashlights are pure sex, if sex was a really awesome flashlight (and it is)
- Marines buying their own weapons
Negatives (although I feel odd supplying any since it's still in development)
- Still no sign or real word on dynamic infestation. Mostly just worried it'll get cut from the game.
- Comms seem very reluctant to be constantly in the chair/hive (unsure if it's just ADHD people or something game-mechanic-wise)
- Ambiguous gorge role (remains to be seen though, since not everything is in yet)
- Drifter spam and the difficulty of destroying something that was just put down prior to its death (since it auto-builds)
- Whip attack area seems oddly large based on its size and whipping animation
- Only complaint with lerk flight is that it is difficult to land precisely in short distances. Jumping from one beam to another, even if very close, is abnormally difficult.
Graphics
Power Nodes
Flashlight
Don't Like :
New command style, multiple comms / alien comm etc. Seems to be just diluting a strong concept instead of concentrating it.
Rines 'buy' their guns? This ain't CS!
Small maps / no minimap
Size of structures, they are too big. The armoury shouldn't be bigger than the CC...
- great visuals - both models and maps
- very nice atmosphere
Bad:
- technical issues (due to lag/performance issues game is basically unplayable - compared to NS1)
- less incentives for team cooperation. Game feels like FPS with detached RTS game played by commanders only.
- loss of NS1 concepts like phase gate, turret factory, alien personal upgrades
- gorges are no longer cute and important
Don't care yet (hope will be fixed):
- balance issues
- not yet implemented minimap