Where is the sneaking?
DC_Darkling
Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Ok ok.. hold on.. imagine.
In NS1 you could sneakup a phasegate as close to the hive as possible in sometimes weird places. (catwalk anyone, remember?)
Or you will crawl in a vent, throw your upgrades there, and pray the marines never get jetpack.
In other words.. you could be sneaking around with real purpose.
Now I feel it is diminished..
getting sneak phasegates is a lot harder because you need to kill infestation in most cases, let alone the power node. Any comm notices a cyst dying.
You can not really build in vents anymore. A Khaam can not reach the spots to build, and a gorge has nothing to drop there. (if there is even room inside to drop stuff).
You can hardly build up on things like catwalks, if at all.
I dont see any good way of fixing it, but I sure as hell miss the sneaking now and then.
What about you folk?
In NS1 you could sneakup a phasegate as close to the hive as possible in sometimes weird places. (catwalk anyone, remember?)
Or you will crawl in a vent, throw your upgrades there, and pray the marines never get jetpack.
In other words.. you could be sneaking around with real purpose.
Now I feel it is diminished..
getting sneak phasegates is a lot harder because you need to kill infestation in most cases, let alone the power node. Any comm notices a cyst dying.
You can not really build in vents anymore. A Khaam can not reach the spots to build, and a gorge has nothing to drop there. (if there is even room inside to drop stuff).
You can hardly build up on things like catwalks, if at all.
I dont see any good way of fixing it, but I sure as hell miss the sneaking now and then.
What about you folk?
Comments
That being said, I have both seen and done ninja PGs on numerous occasions. Its not impossible, though its a bit more difficult, especially on those 24 player servers.
I have made many alien teams pay dearly in harvesters just by avoiding confortations with those tricks.
Sneaking has been determined to be fun. Fun has been determined to be "bad"
Power nodes have been added to reduce the "fun" bug.
-Added power nodes: Marines must announce their intentions to the entire alien team before proceeding.
Aside from infestation, there are also invisible drifters that can burn you too. Or if you trigger a whip/hydra, that's shows up on the map as well.
I like sneaking too, and I can pull it off sometimes, but it's not the same as NS1, I agree. Another aspect that I feel is missing on many maps is dead end hallways and such. There used to be a lot more passages in the NS1 maps. More back hallways and crawlways, ladders and hidden areas that usually weren't travelled, which made it a perfect way for opponents to sneak in. Now you have two entrances to a point (in most cases) and maybe a vent nearby. While the maps are great in terms of the look of the design and such, they still feel 'cramped' in many cases, with few alternate paths.
Nowadays sneaking is something only a few people can pull off with any regularity, since it requires a lot of patience.
I miss this.
Marine's aren't sneaky. They shouldn't be. Aliens are sneaky.
However, as I said above, I miss the larger maps that had more 'dimension' to them. Places like the Observation Bridge in Tanith, which was awkward to travel through, so hardly anyone used it. However, it also made it a perfect way for marines to try and sneak into refinery.
I also miss large hatches that opened and closed, airlocks, elevators, doors, ladders, weldables, switches that activated things the aliens couldn't activate etc.
Unfortunately new players will not be attracted to a game with "huge" maps and where it actually takes some time until you see an enemy or realize what's going on. New players want to walk around, get some new 4wes0m3 weapons as quickly as possible and go and kill stuff.
That's exactly what most players mentalities are about. "Doing stuff".
But since the devs are working close with the community I think that there is some hope that changes will still be made for the better
Edit: Another thing thats quite detrimental to marine hiding: It seems as if alien vision lets them look right through the rich infestation bubbles. Those would make some nice hiding spots sometimes.
I dont know why "younger" players would dislike bigger maps. Afaik Battlefield 3 has huge maps and is quite popular. Even progamers say that long matches are very exhausting, I dont know why there has to be action going on all the time without some time to take a breath.
It was very rare that they were very game changing, if they even worked in the first place.
there is no point to sneaking because invisible alien drifters spot you from a mile away and instantly notify the alien team as to your location.
if you try and sneak through an area that an alien has been even around lately, you leave a black cloud on the map for the commander to see and hear. that's right, even if there is no alien presence nearby, the commander can still see you.
to make drifters more powerful, marines now must spend resources to ping an area, rather than just using the energy of an observatory.
if you make it without seeing an alien, without running across a drifter and without being attacked by other AI units, like whips and drifters, you must then contend with other AI units.
you must first kill any infestation around where you want a PG, any god commander cysts up the PG areas.
then you must contend with the powerful AI unit of the power node, that when finished being completed, allows any nearby aliens to be alerted to the loud noise that occurs when the power comes up, and the drastic chance in lighting that follows.
once you have completed all of these factors, then you can ninja attack something. GL AND HF!
(i'm not even going to start on how aliens don't have a need to be sneaky either, but they don't, its full rush both sides all day long, woooooooooh)
I like that the NS2 map control has more inertia on the alien side than NS1 while the marine use phase gates from a point to another.
It add to the asymetrical dimension of the game and I like this.
Ugh, big maps were always so stressful and unimaginative in the original NS.
Was basicly the point
That was already in the game once. It was removed before the game launched, maybe you already knew that and I'm terrible at jokes. I believe the power pack was removed as it conflicted with the localized 'one in every room' mechanic of power nodes.
The problem lies with the limitations the infestation and power node systems impose. Drifters are also a detriment to this style of game play, capable of offering free scouting even if an alien team is otherwise distracted.