First impressions from a new player.
Falrinth
Join Date: 2013-06-28 Member: 185756Members
Join Date: 2013-06-28 Member: 185756Members
First off all: Good job guys!
The idea of asymmetrical FPS (no mirrored teams with mirrored abilities and gameplays) is such a desired fresh air from all the quakish, codish and battlefieldish old steaks. The settings of alien vs marine team dragged me here in a blink of the eye.
However after playing a while i found that a lot of what i was hoping for is not here. The things i would love to see in a asymmetrical FPS with aliens and marines:
1. a feel of being prey as marine that only due to superior teamwork, awaraness, tools and tactics can survive
2. totally different gameplay for both teams - aliens are hunters, stalkers or rushers in groups, very agile, quick and deadly in melee; while marines should be countrary: slow moving (and no athmoshpere breaking quakish jumping&shootin' in melee) but superior on range and in cooperating group covering each others from corner to corner etc.
Right now when i choose alien, the success of ambushing someone from the ceiling from behind, from above, gives me nothing, cause there is enough time for marine to shot back, and jump unnaturally like crazy so he can get away with his life, having an alien melee fighting monster ambushed him... That just doesnt seem right
And then i have seen the marine with jet pack... T_T Why homogenising the teams so much if your game's biggest con was supposed to be (or at least as it looks like) asymmetrical teams?
Imagine marines scanning every area they go to secure with flashlights, watching the ceilings and walls carefully, searching for aliens ready to rip them apart given the chance. It would be so much better than quakish version we have now Its like a team fortress gameplay (and thats not compliment, TF is repulsively boring) with no athmoshpere. Gameplay where aliens so often becames a prey insetad of feared and respected hunters. A little thrills and scaring woudlnt hurt in such settings.
The idea of asymmetrical FPS (no mirrored teams with mirrored abilities and gameplays) is such a desired fresh air from all the quakish, codish and battlefieldish old steaks. The settings of alien vs marine team dragged me here in a blink of the eye.
However after playing a while i found that a lot of what i was hoping for is not here. The things i would love to see in a asymmetrical FPS with aliens and marines:
1. a feel of being prey as marine that only due to superior teamwork, awaraness, tools and tactics can survive
2. totally different gameplay for both teams - aliens are hunters, stalkers or rushers in groups, very agile, quick and deadly in melee; while marines should be countrary: slow moving (and no athmoshpere breaking quakish jumping&shootin' in melee) but superior on range and in cooperating group covering each others from corner to corner etc.
Right now when i choose alien, the success of ambushing someone from the ceiling from behind, from above, gives me nothing, cause there is enough time for marine to shot back, and jump unnaturally like crazy so he can get away with his life, having an alien melee fighting monster ambushed him... That just doesnt seem right
And then i have seen the marine with jet pack... T_T Why homogenising the teams so much if your game's biggest con was supposed to be (or at least as it looks like) asymmetrical teams? Imagine marines scanning every area they go to secure with flashlights, watching the ceilings and walls carefully, searching for aliens ready to rip them apart given the chance. It would be so much better than quakish version we have now
Its like a team fortress gameplay (and thats not compliment, TF is repulsively boring) with no athmoshpere. Gameplay where aliens so often becames a prey insetad of feared and respected hunters. A little thrills and scaring woudlnt hurt in such settings.
Comments
But it is one of the my interesting and deep competitive games around. It is a deceptively fast paced game, finely balanced with a brutal learning curve.
Spend some time with it, and you will soon love the game for what it is. Even if that is not what you expected it to be.
There are a lot of nuances to playing alien that it's very difficult to pick up in a short space of time. I have to say, NS has one of the steepest learning curves of any game, ever. When played well, aliens really can be dominating, and give marines that total fear you describe, but alas, especially with a sale on and therefore lots of new players, the aliens don't generally have the experience to do this right now in the servers. Larger servers, while being more forgiving to new players, tend (my personal opinion) to be spamfests and can be incredibly frustrating: concentrated marine fire will devastate any lifeform very effectively, and with simply more marines on the map, it's possible to get rolled quite easily if they work together even remotely well.
This is, however, a very communicative and friendly community, and I hope you can make the most of that. Join up a 16-20man server, enable your mic, and ask questions if you're not sure what's going on. You need to use the map effectively (you'll notice that pro players have the map open a LOT!), and this will be invaluable when learning the maps, too.
Probably the 2 biggest useful nuggets I can give you right now:
1) SOUND. You make a LOT of noise, unless you have the level 3 phantom ability, or you're stalking (press shift). If setting up an ambush, crawl to position with shift on from a lot further than you might think you need to. Sound travels a long way, and good marines WILL hear you coming, and they will expect you to be above the door, or in the vent.
2) Walls. Use them. The very easiest skulk to kill is the floor skulk. You can gain a lot of speed by jumping next to a wall, then hit the jump key as you glance by the wall mid-jump. Then jump again when you hit the floor to maintain some momentum. There is a strafe-jumping technique you can use to maintain essentially all momentum. This has 2 effects: a) you go fast and get around the map faster, and b) you're MUCH harder to hit if you're bouncing, moving fast, and moving both side to side and up and down.
Oh and another handy tip: parasite. Weapon 2 on the skulk does 10 damage (do two bites to a marine and then parasite him and you'll get a parasite kill, which is always funny), but also highlights the marine for all nearby aliens to see, even through walls.
I hope you find some more fun games than it sounds like you had. Please do bear in mind that the influx of new players, while fantastic, also means that there will be some shoddy games had while people are working out what to do...
A good thing to do would be to look up some competitive NS2 gameplay on YouTube, it really helped me realise how the game was meant to be played.
Those two things are already fundamentally in the game to be honest. Aliens can move much faster, are deadly in melee range, and have more succes when attacking in groups and using ambush tactics. Marines have to check every corner and ceiling when moving out, use their ranged advantage as much as possible, and also have to avoid moving alone as that'll get them killed quite easily. It's exactly how you described.
BUT, you might not be seeing these things at the moment, because there is currently a huge influx of new players who have yet to learn proper alien movement, ambushing and group tactics. So give it some time for the dust to settle.
Personally I'm a fan of the marine movement, but I see where you're coming from. Except marines wouldn't stand a chance versus the aliens without some movement like that. Aliens can always keep up.
Playing competitively I get that feeling you're talking about with checking a room with a flashlight every single room I lead into, it's intense and truly awesome.
But yeah, like they said above, the game does have all you said about the atmosphere, you just need to find better players or watch some streams. Competitive matches are the way to go!
Lol..
Great post though - thank you for taking the time to write it.
If you play more you will definitely begin to see those two items exist.. Even though I agree that sprint should be removed. ;-)
Don´t be naive to think even if you do everything right, there are vets out there, who still murder you.(true enemy of this game)
You've never played eve online
It's difficult to design a multi-player game, especially a fasted paced game, with a lot of atmosphere. The things you described do happen with a good comm and good marines. Sometimes when wandering into a potentially contested area, you can ask your comm to give a scan there before entering to check for ambushes. Get in the habit of quickly checking the ceiling when entering rooms for ambushing skulks as well.
The game is all in all much faster than NS1 especially since marines can sprint and bunnyhopp pretty much all the time. I dislike it, though, I can live with it. I nevertheless understand the disappointment that NS2 obviously tries to avoid a darker atmosphere. I think it would suit the game perfectly and add a lot as I think atmosphere and multiplayer-games are not opposite. NS1 proved that it can be done, and with the Sparkengine, especially the great lighting-system the game offers, I really think that same badass Alien-like maps could be done.
I consider Quake, CS, and ET to be some of the pinnacles of multiplayer gaming, so to me NS2 being similar to those games would be seen as a huge plus.
To each his own however
As a human being myself, I'm inclined to say the aliens are the good guys.
A slower pace would probably have improved teamplay too (more time to group up, weld fellow players, think about which route you're going to go and so on). Especially for newbies and casual players like myself. A slower pace gives the side with ranged weapons an advantage, but an increase in health for the Alien side could alleviate that. I wonder how much work it would be to mod this...?
1 thing about NS, is the more hours you put into the better the game gets, its all very daunting at 1st as it dose have quite a steep learning curve but once your over that, you will see this game for what it really is.
A Masterpiece.
rectanglar atriums connected by corridors lit by vertex light is atmospheric ^^ personally i feel that the gameplay does contain elements of what OP said, its just that the pacing and atmospherics of a single player game are not possible in a multiplayer game.
Thats entirely not true. Check the multiplayer in left for dead or dead space 2 or the very old now AvP. Asymmetrical gameplays are just much more interesting than TF, Quake fragging race.
The more you play, the more enjoyable it gets, that's true for most games. But NS2 is not really about getting frags and topping the scoreboard. If anything, of all the FPS games I've played, this game is most of all about getting the win. Personally, I haven't seen many other shooters that puts as much focus on teamwork as this one. Of course, you can play games like CS/COD/BF competitively and use teamwork/communication too, but in general pub play those things are practically non-existent. NS2 pub play however... Although, there are heaps of green players on the servers right now who have yet to learn to this.