<!--quoteo(post=1987069:date=Oct 4 2012, 10:46 PM:name=fanatic)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fanatic @ Oct 4 2012, 10:46 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1987069"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Since we're getting close to release, I realize time is very much limited and needs to be prioritized. The time for sweeping changes is over, at least until after 1.0. There are, however, a few smaller issues I'd like to point out in the hopes that they will get looked at. Most, if not all, of these should hopefully take little time to rectify. Some are bugs, others are features I think could be improved. It's very possible you already know about the bugs.
<!--coloro:#FFA500--><span style="color:#FFA500"><!--/coloro--><b>(1) Cyst bug:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Sometimes the alien starting hive harvester will not have cysts leading up to it, giving aliens an additional cost at the start of the round and causing damage to the harvester.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(2) Pistol bug:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Sometimes, when switching to the pistol, it will not fire. The only way to un-jam it, is to switch to another weapon and then back to the pistol. Leads to very frustrating and unfair deaths.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(3) Frag message time:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Following the frag message feed is essential to keeping track of what's going on in the game, both when you're playing in the field and when you're spectating a game. Unfortunately, the messages in the feed right now disappear very fast; a lot faster than they used to in NS1. In hectic situations it's very easy to miss some of the messages because they disappear so fast, leaving you without potentially vital information. Doubling the time each message stays on the screen before disappearing should be enough to fix this.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(4) Frag message spam:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Similar problem to point 3, but this time related to unimportant messages basically spamming the frag message feed, making it harder to notice the important messages in between. This is primarily a problem with cysts (cyst "frags" are largely useless information), but frags of non-essential structures like armories, resource towers, shades, crags, and so forth, are also mostly useless information. I would be very happy if you could at least remove the cysts from the feed. Of the structures, I would ideally like to see only hives and command stations displayed in the feed, though.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(5) Feedback delays:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> I know this is largely dependant on latency, for example with regards to the damage indicators and frag messages, which obviously you can't do anything about, but at least you shouldn't make it worse by adding prolonging animations to the feedback. One particularly important example is the health/armor bar. For aliens, especially the fade and lerk, being able to gauge the exact amount of damage you're taking is essential to your survival. Any delay on that information can potentially get you killed due to misleading the player into miscalculating his current position ("can I withstand this DPS or do I have to run away if I want to survive?") -- and it does get me killed on a regular basis as well. Please remove all the non-latency-enforced feedback delays, or at least add an option to turn them off. The excellent <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=116254" target="_blank">instant hud mod</a> should provide you with almost everything you need to do this.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(6) Sound bugs:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> This one might be a little more tricky than the others mentioned so far, but it is a very important one. As discussed in other threads on this forum during the past week, the directional sound sometimes bugs out depending on what speaker configuration you're running or whether or not you're strafing. The sound effects are still not as accurate as they ideally should be either. It has gotten a lot better than it used to be, but it is difficult to gauge exactly where the enemies are located just by the sounds they make. Sometimes they sound like they're right next to you, even though they're really in an entirely different room; other times they sound like they're in the next room even though they're just around the corner.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(7) Marine footstep sounds:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Put simply; marines are too quiet. It is far too easy to ninja as marines. There's no reason why a running marine should make less sound than a skulk, so perhaps just put the marine footstep sounds on the same level as skulk footsteps.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(8) Skulk walk key:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Skulks often need to be completely silent in order not to alert the marines of his presence; and thus enablind an ambush. The walk key is the only way for the skulk to move quietly. It is therefore of paramount importance that the walk key provides that function (silent movement) flawlessly in all situations. Currently, however, it does not. I've lost count of the times I've tried to walk as a skulk, but instead of moving me forward it stucks me to some wall, forcing me to use the directional keys to move, alerting all the marines in the vicinity of my presence. The reason for this, is that the skulk extra-sticky wallwalk key is located on the same key as the regular skulk walk. The easiest way to solve the problem is simply to separate the two functions into two separate keys. This problem makes ambushing so difficult right now and I really can't stress enough how important it is that this gets looked at.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(9) More keybinds:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Some basic keybinds are still missing. While it can be solved through binding the keys manually in the console, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to just bind these keys in the main menu. I am specifically talking about join team functions (should be F1 to join marines, F2 to join aliens and F3 to join spectators, as it was in NS1) and request ammo.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(10) Auto requests:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Please remove the ammo auto request. It is driving comms mad and annoying marines who might not feel like they actually need ammo at that particular time.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(11) Music volume slider:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Currently there is no way to independently regulate the volume of the game startup music, the victory music or the "command station/hive low health" music. Please add a separate slider, or add these functions to the music volume slider already in the menu.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(12) Shaky machinegun:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> For some reason, the screen starts shaking a lot whenever you fire the machinegun. This is both disorenting and a nuisance for players. It is the only weapon that has such an effect. Please either remove this effect or make it possible to turn it off in the options menu.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(13) Low health effects:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Currently, sound is muffled and the player's screen starts blinking red when his health is below a certain percentage. While some players might find this exciting, many others find it disorienting and annoying. Please either remove this effect or make it possible to turn it off in the options menu.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(14) Assists:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Players are currently only awarded for getting the last hit, even if it was an entirely different player who did all the damage, except for that final shot. This is both unfair and unconducive to teamplay. I've already seen a working low-key assists mod on the All-In servers that works great and should just be added to the game. All it does is add another line called "Assists" to the scoreboard, next to the amount of frags (ideally I'd put it after the amount of deaths though), and that's all that is needed.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(15) Acceleration delay on movement:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Currently there is some sort of acceleration delay on movement, particularly noticeable when playing as skulk. While it reacts instantly to keypresses (starts moving the instant you press the button), it takes some time for your movement to ramp up to full speed. While this might be realistic, it also makes it a lot harder to be accurate in your movements. I would like to see this delay either removed, or at least lessened to allow for more accurate control over movement.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(16) Celerity blur effect:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> While less opaque than it used to be, celerity still blurs your screen while moving. Since the "downsides" approach to upgrades has been canned (see carapace movement slowdown removal), this should also be removed now, or at the very least be made possible to turn off in the options menu. Please also consider making celerity a straight movement speed boost; the current ramp-up time doesn't add anything to gameplay.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Spores right now are very viable. Get kills easily with them, just gotta be good at flying. Spikes on the other hand are next to useless.
If the spikes applied a deadly poison type effect (a la world of warcraft) and stacked with the poison from the bite you could even lower the initial damage on bite and the lerk would be still be viable. For those that don't know deadly poison in wow stacks five times lasting longer and dealing more damage with each stack. A new application at five stacks would simply refresh the duration. One could fly up to someone, give them a quick bite to apply the poison bite and then try to hit them with a few spikes as they're flying away to stack up those dots. The spike rate of fire would have to be greatly reduced unless you want this poison to stack 10 times or something. With the 5 stack method maybe each stack deals 2 DPS and with the 10 stack version each stack deals 1 dps. Dunno how long they'd last.
This could be done a ton of different ways and puts more emphasis on the lerk as a support/DoT class. If you don't want too many dots the bite could even detonate the stacks of deadly poison, removing the stacks and dealing a substantial amount of instant damage as a finisher. If done this way the lerk would probably poison someone from afar at first and then swoop in for the big poison bite kill.
This system would make lerks the support/assassin type life form and would add layers of playability to the lerk, kind of how the fade is now. Effectively combining all the dots available to the lerk (spores, bite, spikes) would raise the skill ceiling through the roof for that class, and lowering initial bite damage would make it so the lerk isnt just a stupid flying skulk the way it is now.
<!--quoteo(post=1988185:date=Oct 7 2012, 01:45 PM:name=Bacillus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bacillus @ Oct 7 2012, 01:45 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1988185"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As it was with the other thread, I think most people very much agree with the list. I guess we could try to discuss the priorities and such though.
For example, if you can have one patch before the Guru of Beta, what would you like to see there first and foremost?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1) Dropped onos balance (nerfed and/or moved to third hive). 2) Vanilla skulk movement love. Fixes to the wall jump mechanic or small base speed increase (maybe 0.5 or 1). 3) Fades -- specifically blink being buffed to somewhere in between b219 blink and b221 blink.
That would be my top 3 list of independent fixes to tackle before b222.
Aliens absolutely must be given hive movement, at least with the appropriate chamber to completed hives. Currently on veil for instance if your team is trying to take sub and you spawn in pipeline you just run for 30 seconds. Marines currently with phasetech and beacon have a ton more mobility than aliens and once commanders learn to use it the metagame is going to be silly. You could do tricky beacon shotgun rushes in ns1 and that was with alien movement from hive to hive, now it's just ridiculous.
I think a lot of the movement chamber / hive teleportation thing could be solved with something simple - getting to choose which egg you can spawn in. Where you get to choose between hives and not individual eggs.
This doesn't really fix the mobility issues when you're actually alive though, and in a perfect world I wouldn't want to use the "sloppy" (sorry) hive teleportation mechanic.
Comments
<!--quoteo(post=1987069:date=Oct 4 2012, 10:46 PM:name=fanatic)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fanatic @ Oct 4 2012, 10:46 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1987069"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Since we're getting close to release, I realize time is very much limited and needs to be prioritized. The time for sweeping changes is over, at least until after 1.0. There are, however, a few smaller issues I'd like to point out in the hopes that they will get looked at. Most, if not all, of these should hopefully take little time to rectify. Some are bugs, others are features I think could be improved. It's very possible you already know about the bugs.
<!--coloro:#FFA500--><span style="color:#FFA500"><!--/coloro--><b>(1) Cyst bug:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Sometimes the alien starting hive harvester will not have cysts leading up to it, giving aliens an additional cost at the start of the round and causing damage to the harvester.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(2) Pistol bug:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Sometimes, when switching to the pistol, it will not fire. The only way to un-jam it, is to switch to another weapon and then back to the pistol. Leads to very frustrating and unfair deaths.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(3) Frag message time:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Following the frag message feed is essential to keeping track of what's going on in the game, both when you're playing in the field and when you're spectating a game. Unfortunately, the messages in the feed right now disappear very fast; a lot faster than they used to in NS1. In hectic situations it's very easy to miss some of the messages because they disappear so fast, leaving you without potentially vital information. Doubling the time each message stays on the screen before disappearing should be enough to fix this.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(4) Frag message spam:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Similar problem to point 3, but this time related to unimportant messages basically spamming the frag message feed, making it harder to notice the important messages in between. This is primarily a problem with cysts (cyst "frags" are largely useless information), but frags of non-essential structures like armories, resource towers, shades, crags, and so forth, are also mostly useless information. I would be very happy if you could at least remove the cysts from the feed. Of the structures, I would ideally like to see only hives and command stations displayed in the feed, though.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(5) Feedback delays:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> I know this is largely dependant on latency, for example with regards to the damage indicators and frag messages, which obviously you can't do anything about, but at least you shouldn't make it worse by adding prolonging animations to the feedback. One particularly important example is the health/armor bar. For aliens, especially the fade and lerk, being able to gauge the exact amount of damage you're taking is essential to your survival. Any delay on that information can potentially get you killed due to misleading the player into miscalculating his current position ("can I withstand this DPS or do I have to run away if I want to survive?") -- and it does get me killed on a regular basis as well. Please remove all the non-latency-enforced feedback delays, or at least add an option to turn them off. The excellent <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=116254" target="_blank">instant hud mod</a> should provide you with almost everything you need to do this.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(6) Sound bugs:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> This one might be a little more tricky than the others mentioned so far, but it is a very important one. As discussed in other threads on this forum during the past week, the directional sound sometimes bugs out depending on what speaker configuration you're running or whether or not you're strafing. The sound effects are still not as accurate as they ideally should be either. It has gotten a lot better than it used to be, but it is difficult to gauge exactly where the enemies are located just by the sounds they make. Sometimes they sound like they're right next to you, even though they're really in an entirely different room; other times they sound like they're in the next room even though they're just around the corner.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(7) Marine footstep sounds:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Put simply; marines are too quiet. It is far too easy to ninja as marines. There's no reason why a running marine should make less sound than a skulk, so perhaps just put the marine footstep sounds on the same level as skulk footsteps.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(8) Skulk walk key:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Skulks often need to be completely silent in order not to alert the marines of his presence; and thus enablind an ambush. The walk key is the only way for the skulk to move quietly. It is therefore of paramount importance that the walk key provides that function (silent movement) flawlessly in all situations. Currently, however, it does not. I've lost count of the times I've tried to walk as a skulk, but instead of moving me forward it stucks me to some wall, forcing me to use the directional keys to move, alerting all the marines in the vicinity of my presence. The reason for this, is that the skulk extra-sticky wallwalk key is located on the same key as the regular skulk walk. The easiest way to solve the problem is simply to separate the two functions into two separate keys. This problem makes ambushing so difficult right now and I really can't stress enough how important it is that this gets looked at.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(9) More keybinds:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Some basic keybinds are still missing. While it can be solved through binding the keys manually in the console, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to just bind these keys in the main menu. I am specifically talking about join team functions (should be F1 to join marines, F2 to join aliens and F3 to join spectators, as it was in NS1) and request ammo.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(10) Auto requests:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Please remove the ammo auto request. It is driving comms mad and annoying marines who might not feel like they actually need ammo at that particular time.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(11) Music volume slider:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Currently there is no way to independently regulate the volume of the game startup music, the victory music or the "command station/hive low health" music. Please add a separate slider, or add these functions to the music volume slider already in the menu.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(12) Shaky machinegun:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> For some reason, the screen starts shaking a lot whenever you fire the machinegun. This is both disorenting and a nuisance for players. It is the only weapon that has such an effect. Please either remove this effect or make it possible to turn it off in the options menu.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(13) Low health effects:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Currently, sound is muffled and the player's screen starts blinking red when his health is below a certain percentage. While some players might find this exciting, many others find it disorienting and annoying. Please either remove this effect or make it possible to turn it off in the options menu.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(14) Assists:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Players are currently only awarded for getting the last hit, even if it was an entirely different player who did all the damage, except for that final shot. This is both unfair and unconducive to teamplay. I've already seen a working low-key assists mod on the All-In servers that works great and should just be added to the game. All it does is add another line called "Assists" to the scoreboard, next to the amount of frags (ideally I'd put it after the amount of deaths though), and that's all that is needed.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(15) Acceleration delay on movement:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> Currently there is some sort of acceleration delay on movement, particularly noticeable when playing as skulk. While it reacts instantly to keypresses (starts moving the instant you press the button), it takes some time for your movement to ramp up to full speed. While this might be realistic, it also makes it a lot harder to be accurate in your movements. I would like to see this delay either removed, or at least lessened to allow for more accurate control over movement.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(16) Celerity blur effect:</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> While less opaque than it used to be, celerity still blurs your screen while moving. Since the "downsides" approach to upgrades has been canned (see carapace movement slowdown removal), this should also be removed now, or at the very least be made possible to turn off in the options menu. Please also consider making celerity a straight movement speed boost; the current ramp-up time doesn't add anything to gameplay.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
For example, if you can have one patch before the Guru of Beta, what would you like to see there first and foremost?
If the spikes applied a deadly poison type effect (a la world of warcraft) and stacked with the poison from the bite you could even lower the initial damage on bite and the lerk would be still be viable. For those that don't know deadly poison in wow stacks five times lasting longer and dealing more damage with each stack. A new application at five stacks would simply refresh the duration. One could fly up to someone, give them a quick bite to apply the poison bite and then try to hit them with a few spikes as they're flying away to stack up those dots. The spike rate of fire would have to be greatly reduced unless you want this poison to stack 10 times or something. With the 5 stack method maybe each stack deals 2 DPS and with the 10 stack version each stack deals 1 dps. Dunno how long they'd last.
This could be done a ton of different ways and puts more emphasis on the lerk as a support/DoT class. If you don't want too many dots the bite could even detonate the stacks of deadly poison, removing the stacks and dealing a substantial amount of instant damage as a finisher. If done this way the lerk would probably poison someone from afar at first and then swoop in for the big poison bite kill.
This system would make lerks the support/assassin type life form and would add layers of playability to the lerk, kind of how the fade is now. Effectively combining all the dots available to the lerk (spores, bite, spikes) would raise the skill ceiling through the roof for that class, and lowering initial bite damage would make it so the lerk isnt just a stupid flying skulk the way it is now.
For example, if you can have one patch before the Guru of Beta, what would you like to see there first and foremost?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1) Dropped onos balance (nerfed and/or moved to third hive).
2) Vanilla skulk movement love. Fixes to the wall jump mechanic or small base speed increase (maybe 0.5 or 1).
3) Fades -- specifically blink being buffed to somewhere in between b219 blink and b221 blink.
That would be my top 3 list of independent fixes to tackle before b222.
This doesn't really fix the mobility issues when you're actually alive though, and in a perfect world I wouldn't want to use the "sloppy" (sorry) hive teleportation mechanic.
Have Ammo Count for Marines be displayed for the Commander