NS1 and NS2
Blarney_Stone
Join Date: 2013-03-08 Member: 183808Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2013-03-08 Member: 183808Members, Reinforced - Shadow
I never played NS1, although I am aware of most of the differences between it and NS2. However, I was wondering what people who have played both think about NS2 in relation to the original game. How do you think this game stacks up against NS1? Are there things you think could've been done better here, or do you think NS2 represents an improvement on the formula?
Comments
NS1 is more fluid (hl engine), deep (asymmetrical, unbalanced, more unique maps), uglier (old graphics)
NS2 is the reverse, not quite fluid yet, very symmetrical, overly balanced, very generic maps(no more very high or very low map parts, rotating doors, welding vents, water), very good looking.
In NS2:
Skulks actually feel balanced with the glanced bites.. I think.
Lerk actually feels complete with all the abilities, Drifters can do the faster biting thing, forget the name.
Fade feels gimped without Metabolize, Acid Rocket and Adrenaline being faster stamina regen, not bigger stamina pool.
Onos, I miss the hilarious devour, can't have players staring at that digesting.spr anymore though, EXOs are a lot of metal too.
The Kharaa commander feels overpowered, super fast building while the rest of the Kharaa team goes killing stuff.
End game the Khammander doesn't have to do much more besides dropping Onos eggs, placing speed up spray, building forward bases.
I feel detached from the team as a Khammander, as opposed to the NS1 builder gorge.
In NS1 having tech 3 (HA/HMG/JP) or hive 3 abilities (Gorge webs, Fade acid rocket, Skulk xenocide) felt like actually having the upper hand.
It sounds like sentry spam was really a thing, though
NS1 is excellent in the pub servers, NS2 is boring
NS2 probably is better then NS1 in competitive match.
But i prefer more tactical games like RTCW and Cod(1-2) or CS, the study of nades, snipers and the global moving of the men in the map etc etc is more interesting.
NS2 is only run like chickens, shooting faster, but no other skill are request.
i dont have aim. but i can throw a nade from side to side and kill ppl camping with rifle in every point of the map. this is what i call tactic gameplay, u can reach this lvl only studing hard the game with clanmates and watching a tons of demos to counteract the tactics of others.
NS2 from this point of view is flat, is like Quake3, is totally skill/aim based. ( considerated all players capable of jumping and tricking, obvious )
It's hard not to look at things through the rose-tinted nostalgia goggles, but there were a lot of aspects of the game that I preferred in their earlier incarnations:
I loved the HL engine, it just felt so tight and responsive and clean. The new engine is very pretty, but it has some pretty major performance issues and it just feels kind of muzzy in general.
Heavy Armor was far better than Exos in my opinion, even if just for the ability to build, beacon, and weld. I often wonder how much Exos would actually get used if HA were added back into the game. I suspect very little, except perhaps for railguns, which are surprisingly fun.
I want my HMG and the old style jetpacks back. The new JPs steer like bathtubs, and I hate it.
I actually liked that the aliens were more decentralized and didn't need a comm, it made the game more asymmetrical. I think the alien commander implementation in 2 is pretty weak.
Marines could build anywhere in 1, they weren't tied down to tech points like they are now, and I loved it. You could relocate anywhere, try out crazy strats, and generally have more interesting and dynamic matches.
This is a minor thing, but I actually liked the old stationary siege cannons better than ARCs. I'm not sure why, really.
I hate the power node and infestation mechanics in 2. The power nodes feel like a cheap gimmick and have ruined many a game for me, and in the case of infestation, ruin your CPU cycles. Cysting and re-cysting isn't fun, it's busy work and a nuisance.
Maps were more varied and unique, thanks to the aforementioned asymmetry of marines not being tied down to 'tech points'.
Epic, hours-long knock down, drag out, tooth and nail slugfests. I once played an incredible 8-hour game on NS_Nothing, and it still stands today as one of the most enjoyable, memorable moments in video game history for me. You can still get an occasional incredible cage match like this in 2, which is why I keep playing week after week, but they seem to be pretty few and far between, and the longest I've seen one game go is an hour and forty minutes.
What are some of the things I like better about 2? I'll probably get massively flamed for this, but I love that they took out Devour, Focus, and Bunnyhopping. Devour was just an awful mechanic, focus was really only a problem because of godmode fades, and bunnyhopping was an unintended engine exploit. I think that having 'skilled movement' is all well and good, but it needs to be intentional and incorporated into the design so you can balance around it.
Oh, I also hated webs, I'm glad those are gone too.
With all that being said, I'm still having a lot of fun with 2, a lot more than I expected to be honest. I basically pre-ordered just as a thank you for all the countless hours I had played 1.xx for free, but I had pretty low expectations for the sequel after watching 1 go down the tubes. Now I play almost every night, and while it frustrates the hell out of me sometimes, it's still possible to have those amazing transcendent games that blow everything else out of the water. When it's good, it's really, really good.
O_O the jealousy is pouring out of me in buckets.
It was NUTS. I was marine comm, and we eventually got pinned down in Silo hive, hanging by a thread with minimal res and constantly scrambling to rescue our 1 remaining shotgun. After a while we managed to relocate some of the key structures to the upper balconies, and many aerial lerk / fade / JP dogfights ensued, plus phasegates between the top and bottom. We built a fortress out of that hive. Many onos died to bring us this information.
There were people who played for the first couple hours, went to bed, came back on and were floored when they found out we were still playing the same match. Marines finally managed to push back and claw their way to victory. It was beautiful.
The best part was that the aliens felt like it was a great game too, and I think that if marines had lost in the end, I wouldn't have minded that either after the fight we put up.
I wish I had taken some screenshots of that game.
It worked pretty well, aliens had decentralized anarchist-ants like organization. So the game was not only a fight between melee and ranged, it was also a fight of different "political" organizations; a strong centralized power (no pres) on the marine side vs. completely decentralized one on the alien side. Gorges were obviously very important has they dropped all structures. A direct consequence of this is that even new or low skilled players could be very useful to the team by dropping rts and hives.
The alien organization could fail pretty badly and produce bad games (for example everybody is greedy and don't drop rts) like it can fail in NS2 with a bad alien commander, but it was a different kind of fail that the "bad commander" one.
The introduction of dual res pool system as also a lot of consequences (for example 6 shotguns army most of the game in NS2). And finally the new "map control" mechanisms, power nodes and infestation, are also an important difference.
Lets not forget people going gorge just so they could save for a fade (because with one hive a skulk maxed out at 30 pRes).
NS1 was and still is vastly superior to NS2 in terms of skill requirements and skill potential, so I would say comp NS1 is vastly superior to comp NS2. NS2 is much more of a public focused game compared to NS1, which has both pros and cons. The impacts of some of the designs for NS2 will impact the longevity of the game long term IMO, and will make it difficult for it to enjoy the same lifespan as its predecessor.
GET TO THE RED ROOM!
a 7 hour marathon fighting out of the red room on ns_nothing with 0 hives (marines) to 3 (aliens), onii and lerks all over us like a tramp on chips, sweating to respawn so you could save the final welder before it disappeared, and a similar experience in the docking hydraulics tunnel (between engine room hive, and atmosphere processing - double res point) on ns_bast, were easily my most fun gaming experiences ever, and I have been gaming since 1983.
It also somehow felt more interactive - the ability to open and close vents, and to be able to choose where to build stuff like CCs, really gave the marines freedom that aliens obviously couldnt enjoy as they couldn't use marine tech ...and I guess a hive location needs the right atmospherics, right? in any case, it kinda made sense. I was the master of the marine relocate tactic!
NS2 is faster, very pretty and a lot more symmetrical, as described by other posters. I don't think it's any more accessible, but I somehow felt as a skulk that I was much more lethal in NS1 compared to NS2. Right now I feel like a Russian running up the banks of the Volga to be mown down by the SS ...
The speed/fluidity/crispness of the HL1 engine makes NS1 soooo much cleaner than NS2. Aiming, running, wall-jumping, bunny-hopping, etc, it was all so much smoother in NS1. I often feel in NS2 like "wtf I was clearly shooting that guy" or "what the **** why can't I bite that guy?" The minimal system requirements of the HL1 engine simply mean that it is faster, cleaner, smoother. Aiming was cleaner. Bouncing around as a skulk was cleaner. Lerk flight was cleaner, (though perching on walls is awesome). Blinking around as a fade was cleaner. Jetpacks were soooo smooth. Feel like tugboats now. Overall just the new engine feels clunkier. In NS1 I can nail a skulk/lerk with an LMG. In NS2 it feels like a crapshoot. May just be my inexperience with the new game though t.t;
Balance wise, I also preferred the much starker differences between the two factions in NS1. While the idea of tech points requiring marines to take territory is a nice idea, it makes the two sides more similar. It used to be marines were entirely capable of holding up and surviving with only a couple of nodes or relocating to a hive and holding it. That said, I do like other aspects of balance in NS2. Gorge tunnels replacing MC teleport means that aliens aren't forced to go MC every game. SC starts are still gimmicky, as they should be.
I really don't like aliens having a commander in theory, but I admit in practice that it streamlines the game. Everyone wanting to be the hotshot early fade and whoring res instead of dropping chambers and nodes was frustrating. I am torn on needing to research hive abilities, but it is understandable. Aliens getting a 3rd hive in NS1 was almost always game over.
Onos feels awesome in NS2. I miss eating people, but I actually *feel* like a giant stomping death machine. Love it. I really miss metabolize and ACID ROCKET for fades, but let's be honest, they're strong enough as is. Focus was overkill for them, but I highly miss it for skulks.
I really miss the old maps. I want hera, tanith, eclipse, and nothing back! Again, this is probably simply nostalgia, but I felt like asymmetrical maps offered awesome strategies.
The new marine tech tree and reliance on tech points, and the new infestation system are both cool, but honestly I feel that they limit strategy. Marines are now bound to their start, and both sides are fighting for *tech points* and not strategic rooms as much. Locking down generator room to cut the map in half simply isn't as important in NS2. You need that 2nd tech point instead.
Meh, I could rant and talk about how much better NS1 and broodwar were than NS2 and SC2, and I could rant about those damned kids on my lawn with their skateboards and swear words, but both games are truly enjoyable. I am doubtlessly affected by fond memories of playing NS1 til 4 in the morning, but I still hold high hopes that NS2 will clean itself up and get that crisp, balanced, and awesome gameplay that NS1 had. I think it can get there!
NS2 gives me hope and I understand it is still being developed.... but yeah nowhere close to the original. BUT in its defense very few games in existence good compare to the original. So yeah i liked NS1 quite a bit
I played ns1 a lot and loved it. Except devour... But that aside, it was great.
But I cannot agree with you. For me, ns2 is better. Yes there are some things that can be improved, and perhaps a couple that ns1 did better, but overall ns2 is, for me, the best game of all time.
I replayed ns1 for a few weeks before ns2 was released. Beware of rose-tinted spectacles!
Well I'd hope there would be a lot of NS1 fans seeing as how NS2 wouldn't exist without it!
As for your question I am pretty sure there is still one server that has people playing on it so it isn't completely dead. (Been a while since I have loaded up NS1 though) As for NS2 port you are looking for xDragon's NS2:C mod. It changes a lot back to the NS1 style res model but also is an expansion of the concept so it is not an exact 1:1 clone. I don't think it is up to date for the latest build however.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/121482/ns2c
So, yeah, if you think siege situations can get bad in NS2...
1) 100+ fps all game
2) Good movement feel due to HL engine. Jetpack was sleek and fun to fly, skulk was fast.
3) Some incredibly tense games. Don't get the same feeling with NS2.
4) Old movement chamber (MC) mechanics. The gorge spit the building hive so aliens at other hives, or any MC chamber could instantly transport over to help. Gorge tunnels could replicate this, but they're too cumbersome currently.
5) Fade was amazingly fun to play once you got a handle on it. Most of the alien mid game centered on a super fade holding up the team for better or worse.
6) OLD SIEGE CANNONS. Sneaking a PG and getting some sieges built before aliens noticed was fun.
7) Game didn't end on CC\hive destruction, fun hunting down last marine and gorges in a vent.
Bad
1) Many pub games were stacked. Games were decided within 3 minutes sometimes.
2) The notorious "getting killed around the corner" lag due to hl network quirks.
3) Most pub games on aliens had little communication. Sometimes nobody would save 50 res to drop the second hive which usually meant game over.
4) Old graphics, not a biggie though.
NS2 Good
1) Alien comm - Most pub servers didn't have any direction on aliens until somebody took charge. This formalized things so there is a lot more communication now. Although it still needs improvement.
2) Graphics. Game is very pretty to look at.
3) Microphone codec is much improved. Rookie mode. Mod system integration with steam workshop makes installing mods incredibly easy.
4) Power node system. End those pesky turting marine rounds... lights going out is cool (lighting still needs tweaking though in pitch black)
5) Gorge tunnels! I like the idea, just not the current implementation. It's too confusing have multiple tunnels to enter instead of having a hub or something.
NS2 Bad
1) Performance. Only get 20 fps in fights with lowest details and low resolution. My computer isn't new but it can handle most other modern games well on medium-high settings. Very CPU intensive. Takes some of the fun out of the combat.
2) ARCs. As interesting as they sounded when first introduced (MASCs lol), I don't really care for them. Easy to spam them and just roll them into an alien hive once you have lots of money coming in. A hard cap on how many you could build might resolve this.
3) JPs. The movement feels like a brick in this game. I loved how they felt in NS1, but I imagine that's difficult to replicate.
4) Fading. New blink is cool and similar to the old one. But they're so fragile right now, back in NS1 they could take some punishment if they were good. Marines had to work to block them to take them down.
There is a lot that can change thouh in another year or two, so I'm still hopeful NS2 will eventually be as good as NS1.
Lol, come on I really enjoy ns2, you guys are bashing it way too hard.
I like the combat in ns1 much more, it was very fast, very deadly and over in moments. NS2 combat feels rather neutered in comparison, everyone feels weak, jumping is prioritized and prevalent and often (especially with less skilled players) combat turns into a long, drawn out jump fest.
The same (but much, much more so) goes for the gorge, ns1 gorge was scary(for the marines) and fun(for the gorge). Ns2 gorge is like a crappy rts worker who can only place 3 buildings, still fun and useful but a shadow of what it was.
At least thats what the skulk/marine combat and gorge feels like, I sucked too much to play the other alien classes in ns1 so I cant comment on them (thought considering all the cut abilities I imagine it is no picnic on that front either).
And of course maps, the stock ns2 maps feel very simplistic compared to some of the stuff seen in ns. Not to mention larger models and marine sprint make maps feels much smaller.
On a slightly more serious note NS1 changed the whole way I think about FPS games and multiplayer. It's kind of hard to compare any game with that.
What negatives did you find there? I just absolutely loathe the nostalgia argument without any backup. Way too often it's used as the go-to when you actually don't have a proper argument.
And don't judge this on nostalgia. Go back and actually play NS1 for a bit. You'll be horrified.