I'm sure there are many others like me who were disappointed when it became apparant that UWE were not making NS1 with new graphics.
NS2 has tried many times through alpha/beta to implement 'cool' idea's that were just terrible. The game has slowly started reverting itself to NS1 and each time this happens it gets better and better.
You have to remember that NS2 is only here purely because of funding (pre-orders) from NS1 vets. We all expected NS2 to be like NS1, many gamers didn't even expect NS2 to make it but pre-ordered as a thank-you for all the hours they played NS1. You can understand peoples frustration when NS2 was released and all these terrible idea's came with it when they had a tried and true formula in NS1.
I don't really give a shit if some new guy doesn't want NS2 to be like NS1, without NS1 vets pre-ordering to keep UWE alive NS2 would not even be here today.
Now i'm just waiting for the patch that removes pres from marines, alien commander, tres for aliens and fucks off infestation / power nodes.
That would solve marine weapon explosion, alien life form explosion and get rid of infestation which is purely atmospheric and has nearly no bearing on the game apart from hindering alien's ability to place shit where they want.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@male_fatalities i'm pretty sure it was very clear from the beginning that NS2 wouldn't be NS1 with better graphics.. in fact i know i've read devs say such things throughout the course of development, including pre ordering days 3 years ago.
I knew i was pre ordering a game with dynamic infestation and lighting.. as i'm pretty sure most did, especially fans/ vets.
Last week I went back and played NS1 with some other people. It reminded me why I never played NS1. NS1 itself is okay. The problem was that there were simply more entertaining alternatives available. Instead of playing NS1 during the golden HL1 years I stuck to The Specialists and Zombie Panic.
Since the 250 patch I have stopped playing NS2. It's the same thing all over again. Instead of The Specialists and Zombie Panic vying for my attention I now have games like Borderlands 2 and Alan Wake vying for my attention. I put in 400 hours of gameplay time into NS2 from December to June. That was the bulk of my time spent playing games. Now NS2 doesn't even come up on my recently played games.
This gets back to the problem: NS1 was just okay. It wasn't exceptional. NS2 250 suffers from the same problem. If NS2 250 were the only game available I would still be playing it. But it isn't. Instead history repeats itself and I find myself playing other games instead.
On a side note if NS2 ends up dropping to a low amount by this Saturday I'll buy a few extra copies for my backup LAN party accounts. We won't be playing 250 though. We will stick to the 249 mod. This game used to be exceptional. We will play the gameplay that I fell in love with back in December.
This thread has a common misconception, evolution is not a one way street or has version control. The word devolving shouldn't even exist, cause that would require a Delorean and the shenanigans of Dr. Emmett Brown :P
I think the word being sought is dedifferentiation.
could be the reactivation of vestigial genes. which is a pretty fitting analogy actually.
Last week I went back and played NS1 with some other people. It reminded me why I never played NS1. NS1 itself is okay. The problem was that there were simply more entertaining alternatives available. Instead of playing NS1 during the golden HL1 years I stuck to The Specialists and Zombie Panic.
Ironic that you mention TS since that mod went from being really great and fundamentally pretty well balanced (in the sense that every gun was op as hell) to being kind of bad because of a change in developer direction (he wanted to make fights more like actual action movies which meant making all the guns weaker and less accurate). Changing gameplay to add stuff that looks cool is almost always a bad idea for a competitive (as in, humans vs. humans) multiplayer game.
I actually like having pres and tres and having an alien comm now but it's been a nightmare trying to get things balanced and I'm sure that at high levels of play NS1 was a better game from a balance perspective. The fact that we still don't really have a good solution to lifeform explosions other than 'pub players are too bad to have more than 1 or 2 decent fades at the same time' is kind of silly.
Last week I went back and played NS1 with some other people. It reminded me why I never played NS1. NS1 itself is okay. The problem was that there were simply more entertaining alternatives available. Instead of playing NS1 during the golden HL1 years I stuck to The Specialists and Zombie Panic.
Since the 250 patch I have stopped playing NS2. It's the same thing all over again. Instead of The Specialists and Zombie Panic vying for my attention I now have games like Borderlands 2 and Alan Wake vying for my attention. I put in 400 hours of gameplay time into NS2 from December to June. That was the bulk of my time spent playing games. Now NS2 doesn't even come up on my recently played games.
This gets back to the problem: NS1 was just okay. It wasn't exceptional. NS2 250 suffers from the same problem. If NS2 250 were the only game available I would still be playing it. But it isn't. Instead history repeats itself and I find myself playing other games instead.
On a side note if NS2 ends up dropping to a low amount by this Saturday I'll buy a few extra copies for my backup LAN party accounts. We won't be playing 250 though. We will stick to the 249 mod. This game used to be exceptional. We will play the gameplay that I fell in love with back in December.
Sadly enough this is not the first time I have heard and seen this happen recently which should show that there is a problem somewhere to do with enjoyment of the game more than simply balance, lets further discuss these things so that we can find out exactly what the problem is that driving so many away. I have even seen people that was making a competitive team suddenly quit and start playing other games, thats a big change from wanting to go competitive in NS2 to not playing at all. I personally am not going to stop playing but I must admit that somehow it doesn't seem quite as fun recently but i'm not really sure whats giving me that feeling (im not blaming B250 for it nor can I ignore it as a possible factor).
If it weren't for all of these regular updates, I'd probably have stopped playing NS2 some time ago. Changes can keep a game fresh and interesting. In any case, I don't think NS2 is "devolving", it's improving. No point in refusing to make certain changes just because it might make NS2 look a bit more like NS1. That's just illogical. If it works, it stays. If it doesn't work, it goes. That's how stuff evolves.
Jump queuing. Hold space while in mid-air, release after touching the ground and start holding on it again. You reach a satisfactory flow with it.
You can do that? how did you find that out? Makes no sense to me...
You're correct that there's no way in hell you'd ever know it exists by playing the game. It's the exact opposite of intuitive and it's a throwback to a quirk in the original Quake.
You know what's intuitive? Just holding down the jump key instead of spamming it. There is no skill in spamming a key. Anything that can be done with a key macro is not skill.
Jump queuing. Hold space while in mid-air, release after touching the ground and start holding on it again. You reach a satisfactory flow with it.
You can do that? how did you find that out? Makes no sense to me...
You're correct that there's no way in hell you'd ever know it exists by playing the game. It's the exact opposite of intuitive and it's a throwback to a quirk in the original Quake.
You know what's intuitive? Just holding down the jump key instead of spamming it. There is no skill in spamming a key. Anything that can be done with a key macro is not skill.
You know what's intuitive? Just holding down the fire key instead of spamming it. There is no skill in spamming a key. Why can't the game only fire when I move my mouse over an enemy while I hold down M1?. Why do we keep having to spam M1, especially with the pistol? Why can't we just hold it down ffs.
...untied Command Stations ... figure out the consequences of such a change
Instead of cheesy armory lifeform blocking, you get cheesy CC lifeform blocking. We figured this out in NS1 and it was banned in competitive play (before ghost structures existed).
If you want turtling made easier and to undo all the work done to balance maps, untied CC's is a great way to achieve that goal. ("Relocate to double ....")
Jump queuing. Hold space while in mid-air, release after touching the ground and start holding on it again. You reach a satisfactory flow with it.
You can do that? how did you find that out? Makes no sense to me...
You're correct that there's no way in hell you'd ever know it exists by playing the game. It's the exact opposite of intuitive and it's a throwback to a quirk in the original Quake.
You know what's intuitive? Just holding down the jump key instead of spamming it. There is no skill in spamming a key. Anything that can be done with a key macro is not skill.
You know what's intuitive? Just holding down the fire key instead of spamming it. There is no skill in spamming a key. Why can't the game only fire when I move my mouse over an enemy while I hold down M1?. Why do we keep having to spam M1, especially with the pistol? Why can't we just hold it down ffs.
Reductio ad absurdum FTW.
Best reply, said no one ever. Sarcastic and unintelligent.
You do realize your marine weapon is an automatic, yet I don't hear anyone saying it should be semi-auto because "it requires skill".
Skill comes from intelligent play, not mechanics that can be performed without any thought.
So you're throwing all and every technique out of the window as not requiring skill? Then why doesn't every bullet connect, why doesn't every skulk and fade move at maximum speed, why doesn't every marine get the same RoF out of their pistol? Because they lack the skill to do so and are picked off by those don't.
@Minimum
All I read is that you don't like NS2 250 because it's the same like NS1 which is not so exceptional, BUT WHY? Be specific and base you complains on something! Just saying 'I don't like it' doesn't do it!
Jump queuing. Hold space while in mid-air, release after touching the ground and start holding on it again. You reach a satisfactory flow with it.
You can do that? how did you find that out? Makes no sense to me...
You're correct that there's no way in hell you'd ever know it exists by playing the game. It's the exact opposite of intuitive and it's a throwback to a quirk in the original Quake.
You know what's intuitive? Just holding down the jump key instead of spamming it. There is no skill in spamming a key. Anything that can be done with a key macro is not skill.
You know what's intuitive? Just holding down the fire key instead of spamming it. There is no skill in spamming a key. Why can't the game only fire when I move my mouse over an enemy while I hold down M1?. Why do we keep having to spam M1, especially with the pistol? Why can't we just hold it down ffs.
Reductio ad absurdum FTW.
Best reply, said no one ever. Sarcastic and unintelligent.
You do realize your marine weapon is an automatic, yet I don't hear anyone saying it should be semi-auto because "it requires skill".
Skill comes from intelligent play, not mechanics that can be performed without any thought.
Wrong. Skill comes both from intelligent play and the ability to perform the appropriate action at the appropriate time. Your pistol is not automatic. You have to both aim and time your shots, along with positioning yourself intelligently both in the macro and micro senses. There is no substantive difference between the old movement and the new movement. There is no more or less skill involved in SS/Jump and Blink/Jump, and yet both require you to press your jump key to maintain the momentum. Furthermore, these mechanics don't require 'no thought:' especially once you put them into the combat situation. Granted, it's not the most mentally challenging thing in the world, and once you've learned the mechanics (so very many people so far have not...), it can become second nature, but this is not the same as 'requires no skill.' At some level, perfect positioning requires 'no skill' by your definition, as it can be done without any thought by highly experienced and skilful players with about the same level of effort required as the movement mechanics... Guess what, what's because they're highly experienced and skilful players, and this separates them from average Joe pubber.
What you will hear about the pistol is a set of arguments around whether or not it should be automatic. On these forums, many people have made the argument that they want to keep the pistol as it is. It does require more skill to shoot fast and on target, without question. For this discussion, we can leave aside the controversy surrounding scripts and macros.
My comment above was designed to show how ridiculous your argument is but reducing it to an absurd extreme. It was indeed sarcastic and required very little intelligence to write: a level I deemed appropriate to point out the glaring holes in your argument. Evidently I was wrong about the level required, so have elaborated in this post, which I trust you will find sufficiently clear to now understand why your argument is wholly wrong.
i think i've made my point. This game doesn't tell or inform new players on game mechanics.
Even hugh didn't tackle the new b250 change log to explain the changes.
i think i've made my point. This game doesn't tell or inform new players on game mechanics.
Even hugh didn't tackle the new b250 change log to explain the changes.
Now i'm just waiting for the patch that removes pres from marines, alien commander, tres for aliens and fucks off infestation / power nodes.
Sorry, no matter how much I appriciated it, NS1 is dead, it has made its time.
Visually rewamping a game may be enough to have a quick revival, but it is not enought to go through a new lifecycle.
Marine gameplay on pubs has grown pretty weak. The few games I see marines winning are usually longer than 20 minutes in length and are typically dependent upon marines severely out-teching the khaara with exos and weapon/armor 2+.
With bile bomb being able to be researched within the first several minutes of the game combined with the decreased cost to evolve gorge, ARCs are essentially useless, even moreso because of their ridiculously slow movement speed and needing at least 3-4 to be productive.
Not sure what can be done, but I'd like to see more ways for marines to win games. Khaara can kill power to the room, gang up on a comm chair, or destroy the IPs -- all effective ways to end games or at least severely set back the marines. These tactics can be deployed at all stages of a standard game as well -- early, mid, and late. Due to the lack of marine movement or stealth abilities, sneaky late-gate tactics are highly unlikely. Most marine losses in pubs that resolve in the late game typically end with turtling around the tech point.
Last week I went back and played NS1 with some other people. It reminded me why I never played NS1. NS1 itself is okay. The problem was that there were simply more entertaining alternatives available. Instead of playing NS1 during the golden HL1 years I stuck to The Specialists and Zombie Panic.
Ironic that you mention TS since that mod went from being really great and fundamentally pretty well balanced (in the sense that every gun was op as hell) to being kind of bad because of a change in developer direction (he wanted to make fights more like actual action movies which meant making all the guns weaker and less accurate). Changing gameplay to add stuff that looks cool is almost always a bad idea for a competitive (as in, humans vs. humans) multiplayer game.
I actually like having pres and tres and having an alien comm now but it's been a nightmare trying to get things balanced and I'm sure that at high levels of play NS1 was a better game from a balance perspective. The fact that we still don't really have a good solution to lifeform explosions other than 'pub players are too bad to have more than 1 or 2 decent fades at the same time' is kind of silly.
You're talking about TS 2.1 to TS 3.0 right? If so I know exactly what you mean. I hated TS 3.0 with a passion. Not only was Kung Fu stupidly overpowered in TS 3.0 but they also removed a lot of the flair that I loved. Take the Glock 18 reload animation for example. The TS 2.1 reload animation is still my favorite reload animation of all time. Then in TS 3.0 they turned it into a standard run of the mill animation.
It didn't feel like the same game at all. It looked like the same game but didn't feel like it. That's actually the same problem I'm having with NS2 250.
Last week I went back and played NS1 with some other people. It reminded me why I never played NS1. NS1 itself is okay. The problem was that there were simply more entertaining alternatives available. Instead of playing NS1 during the golden HL1 years I stuck to The Specialists and Zombie Panic.
Since the 250 patch I have stopped playing NS2. It's the same thing all over again. Instead of The Specialists and Zombie Panic vying for my attention I now have games like Borderlands 2 and Alan Wake vying for my attention. I put in 400 hours of gameplay time into NS2 from December to June. That was the bulk of my time spent playing games. Now NS2 doesn't even come up on my recently played games.
This gets back to the problem: NS1 was just okay. It wasn't exceptional. NS2 250 suffers from the same problem. If NS2 250 were the only game available I would still be playing it. But it isn't. Instead history repeats itself and I find myself playing other games instead.
On a side note if NS2 ends up dropping to a low amount by this Saturday I'll buy a few extra copies for my backup LAN party accounts. We won't be playing 250 though. We will stick to the 249 mod. This game used to be exceptional. We will play the gameplay that I fell in love with back in December.
Sadly enough this is not the first time I have heard and seen this happen recently which should show that there is a problem somewhere to do with enjoyment of the game more than simply balance, lets further discuss these things so that we can find out exactly what the problem is that driving so many away. I have even seen people that was making a competitive team suddenly quit and start playing other games, thats a big change from wanting to go competitive in NS2 to not playing at all. I personally am not going to stop playing but I must admit that somehow it doesn't seem quite as fun recently but i'm not really sure whats giving me that feeling (im not blaming B250 for it nor can I ignore it as a possible factor).
Since December there have been many balance patches. I didn't up and quit with those because they were manageable. Overall the enjoyment of the game remained the same. Maybe it got harder to play Alien but the feel of the game was still enjoyable. You're right about NS2 250 being less enjoyable. In my case it's so much less enjoyable that other games are much more fun.
@Minimum
All I read is that you don't like NS2 250 because it's the same like NS1 which is not so exceptional, BUT WHY? Be specific and base you complains on something! Just saying 'I don't like it' doesn't do it!
There are a number of reasons why I didn't like NS1 and NS2 250. Here are a few of them:
* Things are very tedious. For instance armories do not heal your armor anymore. NS1 did this too. When I go to base all I want to do is heal ASAP and hop into the action once again. I don't want to sit around hoping that someone will have enough sense to heal me. That's boring. Even the alien movement is more tedious, but that's a whole topic in itself.
* End game tech being very early and less useful. This totally disrupts the flow of the game. Sure some of the tech has been nerfed, but those things lose their impact. The Exo, Onos, and even Fade have all lost their wow factor. Encountering these late game units isn't as terrifying anymore. I loved that "OH SHIT" feeling when you see an Onos or Exo pop around the corner.
* Continuing on that tedious theme, there is also the fact that the tech tree and upgrade progression is far more complex. The upgrade path pre 250 was fairly straightforward and simple. 250 throws in a bunch of other things like having multiple upgrade chambers, biomass, and paid personal upgrades. It just adds unnecessary complexity to the base game. I'd much rather have a straightforward upgrade path as a commander and not have to worry about calculating pres upgrade costs. Having these things just makes the game more tedious and less enjoyable.
* Continuing on that tedious theme, there is also the fact that the tech tree and upgrade progression is far more complex. The upgrade path pre 250 was fairly straightforward and simple. 250 throws in a bunch of other things like having multiple upgrade chambers, biomass, and paid personal upgrades. It just adds unnecessary complexity to the base game. I'd much rather have a straightforward upgrade path as a commander and not have to worry about calculating pres upgrade costs. Having these things just makes the game more tedious and less enjoyable.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Discouraging you from running back to base after every encounter? Check.
Encouraging more sense of teamwork overall? Check.
Onos and exo are no longer the "gg guys" laughing stock and skill less choices? Check.
Come backs more able to occur? Check.
More depth and variance added to the "so simple i can half gorge, half command" tech tree? Check.
I think we have different opinions on the word "enjoyable" :-P
Last week I went back and played NS1 with some other people. It reminded me why I never played NS1. NS1 itself is okay. The problem was that there were simply more entertaining alternatives available. Instead of playing NS1 during the golden HL1 years I stuck to The Specialists and Zombie Panic.
Since the 250 patch I have stopped playing NS2. It's the same thing all over again. Instead of The Specialists and Zombie Panic vying for my attention I now have games like Borderlands 2 and Alan Wake vying for my attention. I put in 400 hours of gameplay time into NS2 from December to June. That was the bulk of my time spent playing games. Now NS2 doesn't even come up on my recently played games.
This gets back to the problem: NS1 was just okay. It wasn't exceptional. NS2 250 suffers from the same problem. If NS2 250 were the only game available I would still be playing it. But it isn't. Instead history repeats itself and I find myself playing other games instead.
On a side note if NS2 ends up dropping to a low amount by this Saturday I'll buy a few extra copies for my backup LAN party accounts. We won't be playing 250 though. We will stick to the 249 mod. This game used to be exceptional. We will play the gameplay that I fell in love with back in December.
Sadly enough this is not the first time I have heard and seen this happen recently which should show that there is a problem somewhere to do with enjoyment of the game more than simply balance, lets further discuss these things so that we can find out exactly what the problem is that driving so many away. I have even seen people that was making a competitive team suddenly quit and start playing other games, thats a big change from wanting to go competitive in NS2 to not playing at all. I personally am not going to stop playing but I must admit that somehow it doesn't seem quite as fun recently but i'm not really sure whats giving me that feeling (im not blaming B250 for it nor can I ignore it as a possible factor).
Since December there have been many balance patches. I didn't up and quit with those because they were manageable. Overall the enjoyment of the game remained the same. Maybe it got harder to play Alien but the feel of the game was still enjoyable. You're right about NS2 250 being less enjoyable. In my case it's so much less enjoyable that other games are much more fun.
@Minimum
All I read is that you don't like NS2 250 because it's the same like NS1 which is not so exceptional, BUT WHY? Be specific and base you complains on something! Just saying 'I don't like it' doesn't do it!
There are a number of reasons why I didn't like NS1 and NS2 250. Here are a few of them:
* Things are very tedious. For instance armories do not heal your armor anymore. NS1 did this too. When I go to base all I want to do is heal ASAP and hop into the action once again. I don't want to sit around hoping that someone will have enough sense to heal me. That's boring. Even the alien movement is more tedious, but that's a whole topic in itself.
* End game tech being very early and less useful. This totally disrupts the flow of the game. Sure some of the tech has been nerfed, but those things lose their impact. The Exo, Onos, and even Fade have all lost their wow factor. Encountering these late game units isn't as terrifying anymore. I loved that "OH SHIT" feeling when you see an Onos or Exo pop around the corner.
* Continuing on that tedious theme, there is also the fact that the tech tree and upgrade progression is far more complex. The upgrade path pre 250 was fairly straightforward and simple. 250 throws in a bunch of other things like having multiple upgrade chambers, biomass, and paid personal upgrades. It just adds unnecessary complexity to the base game. I'd much rather have a straightforward upgrade path as a commander and not have to worry about calculating pres upgrade costs. Having these things just makes the game more tedious and less enjoyable.
I totally agree with you that the higher life forms and higher marine tech no longer have the fear factor of how terrible and powerful they are. The tech tree for alien for me is not that its too complex but rather awkward and not very intuitive to learn and use so this tends to put some people off as they see it as a daunting task or simply cant be bothered to think that much (which is more often the case). I don't mind having to ay for my upgrades as alien as it does allow me to get to a life form sooner I just need to be mindful that im only basic so play more careful until i get the res to buff myself. So what can be done to regain this "WOW" factor? We need to identify what made these things so great.
The mod doesn't make it more like NS1 (the games are very different).
Just to be sure, have you ever played NS1?
Anyways the 250 broke the game, and it got so boring, that I just don't play NS2 anymore. Even NS1 is better than NS2 right now. Please UWE, just revert the changes ASAP so I can play this game again.
The update made flamethrowers and grenade launchers WAYYYYY too OP. it also increased the marines ability to turtle (not necessarily a bad thing)
Fades are worthless now, and now we need drifters to build alien structures when they already built themselves VERY slowly? Now flamethrowers can destroy bile bombs too? They already destroy spores and that is enough. now we can get onos and exos quicker? That makes mid-game shorter and matches end too quickly (and NS2 matches already ended faster than NS1 BEFORE 250) Now fades get blink instead of shadowstep? Fades cant fight without shadowstep, which was supposed to make fades evade damage (while blink allowed fades to escape from risky situations, and without it you just avoid risky situations)
Comments
So how would an average joe know how to do that?
NS2 has tried many times through alpha/beta to implement 'cool' idea's that were just terrible. The game has slowly started reverting itself to NS1 and each time this happens it gets better and better.
You have to remember that NS2 is only here purely because of funding (pre-orders) from NS1 vets. We all expected NS2 to be like NS1, many gamers didn't even expect NS2 to make it but pre-ordered as a thank-you for all the hours they played NS1. You can understand peoples frustration when NS2 was released and all these terrible idea's came with it when they had a tried and true formula in NS1.
I don't really give a shit if some new guy doesn't want NS2 to be like NS1, without NS1 vets pre-ordering to keep UWE alive NS2 would not even be here today.
Now i'm just waiting for the patch that removes pres from marines, alien commander, tres for aliens and fucks off infestation / power nodes.
That would solve marine weapon explosion, alien life form explosion and get rid of infestation which is purely atmospheric and has nearly no bearing on the game apart from hindering alien's ability to place shit where they want.
I knew i was pre ordering a game with dynamic infestation and lighting.. as i'm pretty sure most did, especially fans/ vets.
Since the 250 patch I have stopped playing NS2. It's the same thing all over again. Instead of The Specialists and Zombie Panic vying for my attention I now have games like Borderlands 2 and Alan Wake vying for my attention. I put in 400 hours of gameplay time into NS2 from December to June. That was the bulk of my time spent playing games. Now NS2 doesn't even come up on my recently played games.
This gets back to the problem: NS1 was just okay. It wasn't exceptional. NS2 250 suffers from the same problem. If NS2 250 were the only game available I would still be playing it. But it isn't. Instead history repeats itself and I find myself playing other games instead.
On a side note if NS2 ends up dropping to a low amount by this Saturday I'll buy a few extra copies for my backup LAN party accounts. We won't be playing 250 though. We will stick to the 249 mod. This game used to be exceptional. We will play the gameplay that I fell in love with back in December.
Yeah... I can live with that. I'm talking about massive designs to rewrite how ns was played as a game, not graphics/infestation.
could be the reactivation of vestigial genes. which is a pretty fitting analogy actually.
Ironic that you mention TS since that mod went from being really great and fundamentally pretty well balanced (in the sense that every gun was op as hell) to being kind of bad because of a change in developer direction (he wanted to make fights more like actual action movies which meant making all the guns weaker and less accurate). Changing gameplay to add stuff that looks cool is almost always a bad idea for a competitive (as in, humans vs. humans) multiplayer game.
I actually like having pres and tres and having an alien comm now but it's been a nightmare trying to get things balanced and I'm sure that at high levels of play NS1 was a better game from a balance perspective. The fact that we still don't really have a good solution to lifeform explosions other than 'pub players are too bad to have more than 1 or 2 decent fades at the same time' is kind of silly.
Untrue, the space bar has to be down when you touch the ground, no matter what.
pres from marines, alien commander, tres for aliens and fucks off infestation / power nodes.
tres for aliens and fucks off infestation
fucks
There is a problem with the censorship on this forum. :P
Sadly enough this is not the first time I have heard and seen this happen recently which should show that there is a problem somewhere to do with enjoyment of the game more than simply balance, lets further discuss these things so that we can find out exactly what the problem is that driving so many away. I have even seen people that was making a competitive team suddenly quit and start playing other games, thats a big change from wanting to go competitive in NS2 to not playing at all. I personally am not going to stop playing but I must admit that somehow it doesn't seem quite as fun recently but i'm not really sure whats giving me that feeling (im not blaming B250 for it nor can I ignore it as a possible factor).
You're correct that there's no way in hell you'd ever know it exists by playing the game. It's the exact opposite of intuitive and it's a throwback to a quirk in the original Quake.
You know what's intuitive? Just holding down the jump key instead of spamming it. There is no skill in spamming a key. Anything that can be done with a key macro is not skill.
You know what's intuitive? Just holding down the fire key instead of spamming it. There is no skill in spamming a key. Why can't the game only fire when I move my mouse over an enemy while I hold down M1?. Why do we keep having to spam M1, especially with the pistol? Why can't we just hold it down ffs.
Reductio ad absurdum FTW.
Instead of cheesy armory lifeform blocking, you get cheesy CC lifeform blocking. We figured this out in NS1 and it was banned in competitive play (before ghost structures existed).
If you want turtling made easier and to undo all the work done to balance maps, untied CC's is a great way to achieve that goal. ("Relocate to double ....")
Best reply, said no one ever. Sarcastic and unintelligent.
You do realize your marine weapon is an automatic, yet I don't hear anyone saying it should be semi-auto because "it requires skill".
Skill comes from intelligent play, not mechanics that can be performed without any thought.
All I read is that you don't like NS2 250 because it's the same like NS1 which is not so exceptional, BUT WHY? Be specific and base you complains on something! Just saying 'I don't like it' doesn't do it!
Wrong. Skill comes both from intelligent play and the ability to perform the appropriate action at the appropriate time. Your pistol is not automatic. You have to both aim and time your shots, along with positioning yourself intelligently both in the macro and micro senses. There is no substantive difference between the old movement and the new movement. There is no more or less skill involved in SS/Jump and Blink/Jump, and yet both require you to press your jump key to maintain the momentum. Furthermore, these mechanics don't require 'no thought:' especially once you put them into the combat situation. Granted, it's not the most mentally challenging thing in the world, and once you've learned the mechanics (so very many people so far have not...), it can become second nature, but this is not the same as 'requires no skill.' At some level, perfect positioning requires 'no skill' by your definition, as it can be done without any thought by highly experienced and skilful players with about the same level of effort required as the movement mechanics... Guess what, what's because they're highly experienced and skilful players, and this separates them from average Joe pubber.
What you will hear about the pistol is a set of arguments around whether or not it should be automatic. On these forums, many people have made the argument that they want to keep the pistol as it is. It does require more skill to shoot fast and on target, without question. For this discussion, we can leave aside the controversy surrounding scripts and macros.
My comment above was designed to show how ridiculous your argument is but reducing it to an absurd extreme. It was indeed sarcastic and required very little intelligence to write: a level I deemed appropriate to point out the glaring holes in your argument. Evidently I was wrong about the level required, so have elaborated in this post, which I trust you will find sufficiently clear to now understand why your argument is wholly wrong.
Even hugh didn't tackle the new b250 change log to explain the changes.
I guess they were new to him as well
Sorry, no matter how much I appriciated it, NS1 is dead, it has made its time.
Visually rewamping a game may be enough to have a quick revival, but it is not enought to go through a new lifecycle.
With bile bomb being able to be researched within the first several minutes of the game combined with the decreased cost to evolve gorge, ARCs are essentially useless, even moreso because of their ridiculously slow movement speed and needing at least 3-4 to be productive.
Not sure what can be done, but I'd like to see more ways for marines to win games. Khaara can kill power to the room, gang up on a comm chair, or destroy the IPs -- all effective ways to end games or at least severely set back the marines. These tactics can be deployed at all stages of a standard game as well -- early, mid, and late. Due to the lack of marine movement or stealth abilities, sneaky late-gate tactics are highly unlikely. Most marine losses in pubs that resolve in the late game typically end with turtling around the tech point.
You're talking about TS 2.1 to TS 3.0 right? If so I know exactly what you mean. I hated TS 3.0 with a passion. Not only was Kung Fu stupidly overpowered in TS 3.0 but they also removed a lot of the flair that I loved. Take the Glock 18 reload animation for example. The TS 2.1 reload animation is still my favorite reload animation of all time. Then in TS 3.0 they turned it into a standard run of the mill animation.
It didn't feel like the same game at all. It looked like the same game but didn't feel like it. That's actually the same problem I'm having with NS2 250.
Since December there have been many balance patches. I didn't up and quit with those because they were manageable. Overall the enjoyment of the game remained the same. Maybe it got harder to play Alien but the feel of the game was still enjoyable. You're right about NS2 250 being less enjoyable. In my case it's so much less enjoyable that other games are much more fun.
There are a number of reasons why I didn't like NS1 and NS2 250. Here are a few of them:
* Things are very tedious. For instance armories do not heal your armor anymore. NS1 did this too. When I go to base all I want to do is heal ASAP and hop into the action once again. I don't want to sit around hoping that someone will have enough sense to heal me. That's boring. Even the alien movement is more tedious, but that's a whole topic in itself.
* End game tech being very early and less useful. This totally disrupts the flow of the game. Sure some of the tech has been nerfed, but those things lose their impact. The Exo, Onos, and even Fade have all lost their wow factor. Encountering these late game units isn't as terrifying anymore. I loved that "OH SHIT" feeling when you see an Onos or Exo pop around the corner.
* Continuing on that tedious theme, there is also the fact that the tech tree and upgrade progression is far more complex. The upgrade path pre 250 was fairly straightforward and simple. 250 throws in a bunch of other things like having multiple upgrade chambers, biomass, and paid personal upgrades. It just adds unnecessary complexity to the base game. I'd much rather have a straightforward upgrade path as a commander and not have to worry about calculating pres upgrade costs. Having these things just makes the game more tedious and less enjoyable.
>far more complex
>more tedious
i don't even
Encouraging more sense of teamwork overall? Check.
Onos and exo are no longer the "gg guys" laughing stock and skill less choices? Check.
Come backs more able to occur? Check.
More depth and variance added to the "so simple i can half gorge, half command" tech tree? Check.
I think we have different opinions on the word "enjoyable" :-P
I totally agree with you that the higher life forms and higher marine tech no longer have the fear factor of how terrible and powerful they are. The tech tree for alien for me is not that its too complex but rather awkward and not very intuitive to learn and use so this tends to put some people off as they see it as a daunting task or simply cant be bothered to think that much (which is more often the case). I don't mind having to ay for my upgrades as alien as it does allow me to get to a life form sooner I just need to be mindful that im only basic so play more careful until i get the res to buff myself. So what can be done to regain this "WOW" factor? We need to identify what made these things so great.
Just to be sure, have you ever played NS1?
Anyways the 250 broke the game, and it got so boring, that I just don't play NS2 anymore. Even NS1 is better than NS2 right now. Please UWE, just revert the changes ASAP so I can play this game again.
The update made flamethrowers and grenade launchers WAYYYYY too OP. it also increased the marines ability to turtle (not necessarily a bad thing)
Fades are worthless now, and now we need drifters to build alien structures when they already built themselves VERY slowly? Now flamethrowers can destroy bile bombs too? They already destroy spores and that is enough. now we can get onos and exos quicker? That makes mid-game shorter and matches end too quickly (and NS2 matches already ended faster than NS1 BEFORE 250) Now fades get blink instead of shadowstep? Fades cant fight without shadowstep, which was supposed to make fades evade damage (while blink allowed fades to escape from risky situations, and without it you just avoid risky situations)
THEY BROKE THE GAME
PERIOD.