AsranielJoin Date: 2002-06-03Member: 724Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Retired Community Developer
Because you dont balance a game by "voting". How would you imagine that working? Every entry in the balance changelog goes through a poll that people can vote for? Somebody has to take the decision at some point to create a coherent game. All discussion about this makes no sense right now anyway. you are just against the changes, because you where not asked about them before. Somehow you start a conspirancy theory about CDT & friends, where does that come from? The changes are good changes, perhaps some numbers are off, but that is very hard to know in advance. We can discuss this again in a few days when people adapted to the changes.
If you dont like how the CDT works, feel free to join it to change it, after all its a community development team. As long as somebody is willing to work in a team and contribute, they are free to join the CDT
hitching is really bad and too many servers have out of date mods so i cant join...they shouldnt be in my list of servers if they have out of date whatever.
That's ridiculous - delete your mods and perhaps your cache, problem solved, if you don't know how to do that ask anyone in-game or on the forums. It takes you like 30 seconds, a lot shorter than actually posting this comment.
would like shadow step back...and the changes to the alien research tree...
Shadow step resembled blink too much, and as a result it was never really researched, because it was never actually a crucial upgrade. Metabolize on the other hand is extremely useful. And that's not coming from an elitist stand-point, this is truth in public as well. Give metabolize a shot, seriously.
making a compmod into the regular game is not a good idea since only a minority of players wanted or asked for the changes...not the normal regular ns2 players, of which there are many more.
lets also not overlook that its the regular player that will influence other people to pickup ns2 more than a competitive player match or stream.
First off, they did not turn compmod in to the regular game - They took SOME features from the compmod.
Tell me; if the game had been called "PUB-BALANCE-MOD", and they had taken some of the features from that, would you still be complaining?
And lastly, compmod has been active on MANY public servers and have worked just fine in terms of balance and gameplay. It's not just competetive players who have wanted to push some of these features, otherwise it would never have happened. The CDT have been so transparent about their updates, check the trello, vote on some features, write on the forum about features you'd like to see or disagree about - BEFORE they ship the damn patch.
please return ns2 development to UWE or at least end this elitist focus on competitive games and get back to the root or mission of UWE...bringing people together via gameplay - not seperating them into competitive or non-competitive peoples.
Obraxis and other CDT members already responded to this well - I'd just like to add that, what you say here makes zero sense. First you complain that they are implementing compmod features in to vanilla. Then you complain that they are separating the community?? Don't you see it's the exact opposite? Having the pubbers play a different game is what is separating the community, if anything at all.
Because you dont balance a game by "voting". How would you imagine that working? Every entry in the balance changelog goes through a poll that people can vote for?
These aren't balance changes, these are gameplay changes.
On the brightside, all the scrubs can stop moaning about CompMod being "so different" from vanilla. I feel sorry for CDT that they have to put up with all of these quite ridiculous posts we've had in this topic. Kudos to everyone who worked for the release.
Because you dont balance a game by "voting". How would you imagine that working? Every entry in the balance changelog goes through a poll that people can vote for?
These aren't balance changes, these are gameplay changes.
I don't get it. Gameplay is not a part of this. Except for Metabolize that was added here, Marines & Aliens sides have no new elements, abilities, or whatever that make the game so different. I don't agree with all the changes made on the CompMod (v3), currently live on competitive servers, that's true & I even complained about this on competitive forums. BUT, I won't lie, for me, these new balance changes CDT just put into NS2 from the CompMod, I have no issue with them. You should really play some gathers or pugs, no matter what, & see the difference between then current vanilla & the third iteration of the CompMod.
There are a bunch of features still different between both (HMG?). Nevertheless, I can also understand some people complaining with the fact to add some features from the competitive scene, balance cannot be appreciated by everyone for say. Finally bringing back most of the NS2 competitive players that stopped playing pub is a nice thing. Public players who are usually not play with these new features must take a look & describe/define what's wrong, exactly like before. A game cannot be perfect in regard of the balance and that's why it seems legit to see CDT trying out some good ideas from CompMod. If that works, great, if that doesn't, let's try something else or make some other changes to improve it. Personally, I played a bit on public servers yesterdays & didn't notice any balance issues actually. Depending of the players in the teams, rounds will or will not be balanced, and CompMod, other balance mod, or last vanilla won't change this anyway.
As already said, play some games in public, find out how this game with the recent changes works out. This is not so different and everything or major problems can be modified for the next builds. CDT did/is doing a great work, if their intention was to make live only their concerns, game will be dead in around 1 month. They take some features from the biggest mods in NS2 (CompMod, NS2+, etc) & they even planned some new elements. If their job isn't appreciated by everyone (never saw changes 100% wished anywhere) people can't say they're not working for the community.
First, I'd like to thank the CDT for their effort and their love for the game. Sacrificing time the way you do, I have nothing but respect for you guys and gals.
I know it is impossible to make it right for everybody. Someone is always going to cry "That change is not good!" (see this comic here: http://xkcd.com/1172/ ) no matter what you do.
Having said that, unfortunately this time it is me who is unhappy. There are some technical problems that are taking the joy out for me. 267 crashed regularly on me, when before it was stable as a horse.
268 now has crazy frame rate drops early and mid game worse than anything I ever had late game. And I am pretty used to playing with 20 fps late game, I don't mind, but 12 fps is too hard even for me.
I am pretty sure that SOMETIMES the hitreg is way off since 267.
But that's just tecproblems. I can live with that. Bugs are inevitable. I played Battlefield, I am used to bugs. Bugs are annoying, but they are stepping stones on the way to a better product. But I know and hate compmod.
Having talked to Flayra in Cologne, I know he hated balance discussions at that point. UWE tweaked the balance like crazy since NS inception. I think it was a near impossible task to accomplish, but imho they finally did that.
The mission was to satisfy the pubs and the competitive players, to keep it balanced for both. Which is, as stated before, impossible.
The existence of CompMod was what many had wished for, basically 2 versions, one for pubs, and one for comp play. And I thought everyone was happy with that.
Now vanilla is CompMod (light). And I can't even say I dislike everything about it. That's the MEAN thing about it, every single design decision on its own probably makes sense. The fade changes for example. Stab and Vortex were underused. Metabolize, so many people wanted that back. The reduced lifeform cost. Makes sense.
There are so many correct decisions, and it is still fresh, maybe the sum of it will turn out balanced and good in the end. But I don't feel it.
You think NS2 has to change to stay good. I thought the game had matured to a good state, carefully balanced out by its developers over the course of years. I really thought we had the perfectly balanced state in an asymmetrical game, a small miracle. That really was what I told my friends, we have two totally different teams, but they are each others equal. Maybe Hivestats are proving me wrong, I haven't checked for a long time now, but it never felt more balanced before, so I didn't see the need to check (I did that very often before).
I did hope you would iron out the technical kinks, make it a better game, carefully and thoughtfully change and test little things, step by step.
For me, it is now a game that is straining my computer over it's limits and is out of balance because of 120 gameplay changes.
I am a medium skilled player at best, crippled by a meager PC and sometimes mere stupidity. I enjoyed most of my ~1200 hours of NS2. I know that I disliked CompMod whenever I played it, but I thought, who cares, that's why it is called CompMod, because it is for the competitive group.
But now it is vanilla.
And I don't enjoy it. At all. I've played some rounds and I hated every single one.
I hate khammanding now. I hate how everything is tied to biomass now even more. I dislike how the fade sounds. I hate how the competitive players reign even more now than before. How one pro fade player can rule the field even more than before, teamwork not needed. Maybe I'll get used to all of it. But right now, I WANT to like it, but I hate it.
tl;dr:
Why change so brutally what was carefully and elaborately adjusted to its state?
Why force competitive mod on all of us?
:_(
@BishopC Some times, perfect balance is not worth it, if it means stale gameplay. Pre-b250 was actually really well balanced, but the games were just really boring.
The fadeballs were not particularly imbalanced, but they were boring and repetetive and there was basically no reason not to use it. Nowadays you have way more variety in terms of lifeforms and it makes for more interesting games.
This is why we have hmg in compmod as well, it's not for balance, hell no. It's to improve gameplay - and I for one, welcome it.
Balance is important, but never value it over gameplay.
I...don't actually see how the relative importance of biomass has changed overall with 268. Seems pretty equal in importance as it was before, but it's even cheaper to upgrade now. Don't really understand that complaint.
Good Fade players have always dominated if their competition wasn't up to snuff. Metabolize doesn't really change that. Now they get something that has a chance of seeing play, because shadowstep was hardly ever a factor before. As nice as it was, it was never as gamechanging as bile, leap, umbra, or even charge. If you could've spared the res to get the mostly useless Fade research over any other possible upgrade, the game had already gone on far too long, or you were so far ahead of the marines, it didn't matter.
Shadowstep will be missed, as well as old vortex (now that was a gamechanging ability).
As an Aussie player, unfortunately we've had CompMod forced on us for many months now due to it being on most of our servers. I think it's a great mod for the competitive community, but seriously...a big WTF on forcing all of the pubs onto this?
What I would like to know from CDT is why all of a sudden you felt is completely necessary to rework the entire resource and purchasing system? I wasn't aware the old system was so broken it had to be completely redone? Surely if it was so broken it would have been addressed sooner....
Gorge Tunnels - 1 marine can easily take this down before the alien team have enough time to respond.... Seriously????? Why don't you do the same to phase gates as well?
I will continue to play, but this is very disappointing.
As an Aussie player, unfortunately we've had CompMod forced on us for many months now due to it being on most of our servers. I think it's a great mod for the competitive community, but seriously...a big WTF on forcing all of the pubs onto this?
This KEEPS coming up wtf. This is simply not a valid complaint. If you have a problem with one of the changes, say specifically which one. The fact that it comes from compmod is as valid as saying that X feature is bad because it comes from NS2+. You have to explain WHY it is bad - and not just "because it's optimized for 6v6". Tell us WHY it doesn't work for 12v12 or what ever - otherwise your opinions are next to useless.
Gorge Tunnels - 1 marine can easily take this down before the alien team have enough time to respond.... Seriously????? Why don't you do the same to phase gates as well?
NS2 is an assymetrical game - and gorgetunnels do not correspond to phasegates for many reasons, and they're not supposed to either.
Why shouldn't a single marine be able to kill a tunnel? That's my question to you. Tunnels are primarily used as huge-ass cysts, to spread infestation.
Is there a reason why the fade blink sound is so loud now? It drowns out everything else. What was wrong with it being a normal volume?
It's like the earbleeding skulk jump sound is back with a vengeance. Please devs, change it back to how it sounded before. I don't know how you guys test this but i play normal stereo. 2.0. X-Fi Titanium.
Is there a reason why the fade blink sound is so loud now? It drowns out everything else. What was wrong with it being a normal volume?
It's like the earbleeding skulk jump sound is back with a vengeance. Please devs, change it back to how it sounded before. I don't know how you guys test this but i play normal stereo. 2.0. X-Fi Titanium.
Ouch.
I agree with this statement, there's only one thing that bothers me, the Fade sound. Everything else is perfectly fine in my opinion. Does this sound is in the CompMod by the way? I didn't notice this before then...
This KEEPS coming up wtf. This is simply not a valid complaint. If you have a problem with one of the changes, say specifically which one.
Rubbish.
1. I mentioned the gorge tunnel issue
2. Why completely overhaul the resourcing system which was working fine
3. No, tunnels are primarily used to move quickly from point A to B. Spreading infestation is just an added benefit of a tunnel. For 1 marine to have the ability to very quickly take down a whole teams travel route is ridiculous. At what point was it ever known that Gorge Tunnels were OP and had to be nerfed?
The CDT have been so transparent about their updates, check the trello, vote on some features, write on the forum about features you'd like to see or disagree about - BEFORE they ship the damn patch.
In all fairness the trello just had 'balance changes' listed but nobody said anything specific about this.
Onos nerfed? 25% less damage reduction is absolutely huge. Worst patch ever :P
Yeah I flashed my first onos last night v.v I'm blaming you, CDT!
The CDT have been so transparent about their updates, check the trello, vote on some features, write on the forum about features you'd like to see or disagree about - BEFORE they ship the damn patch.
In all fairness the trello just had 'balance changes' listed but nobody said anything specific about this.
Onos nerfed? 25% less damage reduction is absolutely huge. Worst patch ever :P
Yeah I flashed my first onos last night v.v I'm blaming you, CDT!
Because you dont balance a game by "voting". How would you imagine that working? Every entry in the balance changelog goes through a poll that people can vote for?
I don't think he was suggesting this, but he has a point about the public discussion -- unless I'm mistaken, there hasn't been any. I don't remember seeing a thread 'Proposed balances changes for 268'.
It wouldn't be hard to make such a post, list the changes in bullet form, and ask 'This is what we're looking at doing, what are your thoughts? Do you agree/disagree, and if so why?'. Yeah, you might get long threads to wade through, but you also might read a perspective you hadn't considered or seen, where you find yourselves saying 'good point, ok lets alter that change and test it in the next PT'.
It's important to have responsibility for final say (too many cooks, et al.) but more input from a greater range of people equally invested in the game can only be a good thing.
Of course if there was a 'Proposed balance changes for 268' thread please ignore this and direct me to the thread, thanks.
@SantaClaws: I think I know what you want to say with gameplay over balance, and I agree to some degree. I also want to remind you of older (230? Not sure) times when aliens had 65% - 70% win rates, and remembering that, I can't value balance high enough. I personally like longer, balanced games, and when those end after 50 minutes or more, I get the feeling of accomplishment. I prefer long a$$ games to being steamrolled / steamrolling within 12 minutes. Which just leave a sour taste.
Also, if you can't balance it evenly, winning in competitive matches is just a matter of "Who gets to play aliens first?". eg. you have a winrate of 60% for Marines, you throw a coin, and the team that gets Marines first will win the event (which could be seen in NS2WC btw., Marines won 90% of the time (I didn't really calculate that, but of all the games played, aliens won 2!)). And you don't want anyone to take away the price because of a coin toss. That's just an example of course. It's just that games tend to go bad when the balancing is bad.
Another example gameplay/balancing: Building a super Onos that Onocides and destroys one complete base with it would be hilarious gameplay. Or endgame umbra that swallows 100% bullet damage. Absolutely hilarious. And I would totally vote for it IF the marines get a mechanic that counters it. It is called good game design: If you include a mechanic, you need to include a counter. That does make it interesting, everything else is just meh. I think pre-268, NS2 had a very good mechanic-countermechanic relation. For every shtick the marines got, the aliens got a counter-shtick (and vice versa of course), and both shticks were timed in a way that they, with fair teams, got on the field at about the same time. In my opinion, this is broken now, and it is imho in great parts because of the fade changes. This does segues nicely to my next point:
As to "CompMod is not a valid complaint", the feeling that most of the posters try to express with this the following (I guess):
The game SCALES very different with skill. You can see that all the time in the different divisions for example, and it is an experience UWE had to learn somewhere on the way: If you balance something for low skill, you break it for high skill, and vice versa. That's one of the reasons it is so delicate: You have to appeal to the high skillers who devote thousand hours and heart and sweat and play competitive, and you have to cater to the pubbers who play on weekends, or an hour in the evening. And ideally to the rookie who wants to find out what all the fuzz is about.
Since this version feels a lot like CompMod, it feels like it is catering to the competitive guys only. The feeling for me is, this is a revision for the pros. Handling and balancing is for the pros. Pubbers and rookies are not considered. Or in other words: It is balanced for high skill now, broken for low skill.
Which is not really a suprise, since coders and playtesters are most probably not medium skilled. But people who played A LOT! Like in A LOT!
Maybe it isn't even such a big deal anymore, since there are not many new players anymore, and those who come don't stay. The only people left on the servers will be the hardcore fans, so it probably makes sense to cater to them. I just find it sad that this version is accelerating that trend even more.
btw, I love the NS1 HMG.
I hope I didn't bore you too much with this far out theories.
@Hobocop: I khammed a round or two, and I was cursing a lot, because you can't research an ability if you don't have the biomass required. It probably won't matter in too many rounds, but before 268 you could research an ability, even though it was not active because you didn't have the biomass necessary. That's what I meant with tying abilities to biomass. I can't time abilities anymore.
@Pelargir : You don't think the khammander changes are gameplay changes? Ask yourself, someone khamming 268 for the first time without compmod experience or explanations will not find the gameplay changed? Then I guess our definitions of "gameplay" differ.
And now to something completely different: 268 gave me the lowest framerate I ever had. Like, ever. I can't remember having 3 fps ever before. And it's rollercoasting like crazy, I get 3 fps, make 2 steps back and have 60 fps again.
Oh, and regarding the 90% win rate of NS2WC: I know that the frenchies won the final round with some all-in french cheese. The point still holds, balance is important.
I just read through, I guess it does sound very negative. I have to emphasize how much I admire the CDT for their efforts, and I am not trying to insult their work. You guys and gals are doing a tremendous amount of work for free, and deserve more praise than we can offer in this forum. I think we all know and thank you for your passion for NS2. Like I said before, it is impossible to cater to everyone, and some people will always be unsatisfied. Nonetheless, even those (like me) who feel left behind have to sound constructive criticism if possible.
The changes to Fade damage wasn't even near unanimous in the competitive community. The Onos movement change (Which I still dislike) was probably drastically closer to being unanimous than the Fade damage change.
Why is it an issue? Well, in compmod you have 6v6 (1 Skulk/2 Lerks/2 Fades). If Lerks are out of position and only leave 2 Fades and 1 Skulk to grind a gate, it'll take a while to widdle that gate down. Whereas, in public games, there is a possibility of 3 Fades, and still 3 Skulks. Before, that Gate would go down pretty fast but now it's going to go down lightning fast with little to no reaction time available for the Marine team. This change was not thought out for public games, period. It was an attempt to try and standardize some of compmod's (drastic) changes into vanilla, with no thought about faction balance in a public scenario. Again, I am standing by my stance of what I previously posted; It's not: "This is broken, and should be fixed/changed." it's: "You know what'd be a cool idea? X!".
i realize nobody really paid attention to this confusing post, but i'm gonna go ahead and point out that this is nonsense anyway. in the scenario you're describing the damage from the fades is completely inconsequential, and i suspect the gate would actually go down slower due to this change. the fades are simply not a relevant factor when trying to destroy the gate if you've got three skulks on it already.
@SantaClaws: I think I know what you want to say with gameplay over balance, and I agree to some degree. I also want to remind you of older (230? Not sure) times when aliens had 65% - 70% win rates, and remembering that, I can't value balance high enough. I personally like longer, balanced games, and when those end after 50 minutes or more, I get the feeling of accomplishment. I prefer long a$$ games to being steamrolled / steamrolling within 12 minutes. Which just leave a sour taste.
Also, if you can't balance it evenly, winning in competitive matches is just a matter of "Who gets to play aliens first?". eg. you have a winrate of 60% for Marines, you throw a coin, and the team that gets Marines first will win the event (which could be seen in NS2WC btw., Marines won 90% of the time (I didn't really calculate that, but of all the games played, aliens won 2!)). And you don't want anyone to take away the price because of a coin toss. That's just an example of course. It's just that games tend to go bad when the balancing is bad.
I really do not want to get in to the NS2WC argument. To me, those results were not about imbalance, but a variety of other factors. But I will leave it at that.
obviously, a completely imbalanced gameplay, is bad gameplay. So you cannot sacrifice balance completely - or it makes bad gameplay. With balance, comes good gameplay, but there are other ways to improve gameplay than just balance is what I'm saying. So I'm not trying to lessen the importance of good balance - I'm just saying it has to come second. If you truly wanted absolute perfect balance, then play a symetrical game like MvM or SwS. But that's not what we want is it?
As to "CompMod is not a valid complaint", the feeling that most of the posters try to express with this the following (I guess):
The game SCALES very different with skill. You can see that all the time in the different divisions for example, and it is an experience UWE had to learn somewhere on the way: If you balance something for low skill, you break it for high skill, and vice versa. That's one of the reasons it is so delicate: You have to appeal to the high skillers who devote thousand hours and heart and sweat and play competitive, and you have to cater to the pubbers who play on weekends, or an hour in the evening. And ideally to the rookie who wants to find out what all the fuzz is about.
Since this version feels a lot like CompMod, it feels like it is catering to the competitive guys only. The feeling for me is, this is a revision for the pros. Handling and balancing is for the pros. Pubbers and rookies are not considered. Or in other words: It is balanced for high skill now, broken for low skill.
You use the word feeling a lot here. And I maintain, that these feelings, that a lot of people have not just you, are sprung from the fact that they admitted these changes are from compmod. If they had just said it was their own ideas or that it was from a completely different mod, then there would not have been so much hate against it. The changes in question, are not essential to competetive play imo. Maybe with the exception of the gorge tunnel, that thing was way too hard to kill in a competetive setting.
I just wish people would judge these changes on their own merits, rather than on the fact that it came from a specific mod.
Did you even read the other post where I already answered this? You don't need to post this again. One IP is pre-placed and the other one is randomly placed in code.
Comments
If you dont like how the CDT works, feel free to join it to change it, after all its a community development team. As long as somebody is willing to work in a team and contribute, they are free to join the CDT
Shadow step resembled blink too much, and as a result it was never really researched, because it was never actually a crucial upgrade. Metabolize on the other hand is extremely useful. And that's not coming from an elitist stand-point, this is truth in public as well. Give metabolize a shot, seriously.
First off, they did not turn compmod in to the regular game - They took SOME features from the compmod.
Tell me; if the game had been called "PUB-BALANCE-MOD", and they had taken some of the features from that, would you still be complaining?
And lastly, compmod has been active on MANY public servers and have worked just fine in terms of balance and gameplay. It's not just competetive players who have wanted to push some of these features, otherwise it would never have happened. The CDT have been so transparent about their updates, check the trello, vote on some features, write on the forum about features you'd like to see or disagree about - BEFORE they ship the damn patch.
Obraxis and other CDT members already responded to this well - I'd just like to add that, what you say here makes zero sense. First you complain that they are implementing compmod features in to vanilla. Then you complain that they are separating the community?? Don't you see it's the exact opposite? Having the pubbers play a different game is what is separating the community, if anything at all.
I don't get it. Gameplay is not a part of this. Except for Metabolize that was added here, Marines & Aliens sides have no new elements, abilities, or whatever that make the game so different. I don't agree with all the changes made on the CompMod (v3), currently live on competitive servers, that's true & I even complained about this on competitive forums. BUT, I won't lie, for me, these new balance changes CDT just put into NS2 from the CompMod, I have no issue with them. You should really play some gathers or pugs, no matter what, & see the difference between then current vanilla & the third iteration of the CompMod.
There are a bunch of features still different between both (HMG?). Nevertheless, I can also understand some people complaining with the fact to add some features from the competitive scene, balance cannot be appreciated by everyone for say. Finally bringing back most of the NS2 competitive players that stopped playing pub is a nice thing. Public players who are usually not play with these new features must take a look & describe/define what's wrong, exactly like before. A game cannot be perfect in regard of the balance and that's why it seems legit to see CDT trying out some good ideas from CompMod. If that works, great, if that doesn't, let's try something else or make some other changes to improve it. Personally, I played a bit on public servers yesterdays & didn't notice any balance issues actually. Depending of the players in the teams, rounds will or will not be balanced, and CompMod, other balance mod, or last vanilla won't change this anyway.
As already said, play some games in public, find out how this game with the recent changes works out. This is not so different and everything or major problems can be modified for the next builds. CDT did/is doing a great work, if their intention was to make live only their concerns, game will be dead in around 1 month. They take some features from the biggest mods in NS2 (CompMod, NS2+, etc) & they even planned some new elements. If their job isn't appreciated by everyone (never saw changes 100% wished anywhere) people can't say they're not working for the community.
I know it is impossible to make it right for everybody. Someone is always going to cry "That change is not good!" (see this comic here: http://xkcd.com/1172/ ) no matter what you do.
Having said that, unfortunately this time it is me who is unhappy. There are some technical problems that are taking the joy out for me. 267 crashed regularly on me, when before it was stable as a horse.
268 now has crazy frame rate drops early and mid game worse than anything I ever had late game. And I am pretty used to playing with 20 fps late game, I don't mind, but 12 fps is too hard even for me.
I am pretty sure that SOMETIMES the hitreg is way off since 267.
But that's just tecproblems. I can live with that. Bugs are inevitable. I played Battlefield, I am used to bugs. Bugs are annoying, but they are stepping stones on the way to a better product. But I know and hate compmod.
Having talked to Flayra in Cologne, I know he hated balance discussions at that point. UWE tweaked the balance like crazy since NS inception. I think it was a near impossible task to accomplish, but imho they finally did that.
The mission was to satisfy the pubs and the competitive players, to keep it balanced for both. Which is, as stated before, impossible.
The existence of CompMod was what many had wished for, basically 2 versions, one for pubs, and one for comp play. And I thought everyone was happy with that.
Now vanilla is CompMod (light). And I can't even say I dislike everything about it. That's the MEAN thing about it, every single design decision on its own probably makes sense. The fade changes for example. Stab and Vortex were underused. Metabolize, so many people wanted that back. The reduced lifeform cost. Makes sense.
There are so many correct decisions, and it is still fresh, maybe the sum of it will turn out balanced and good in the end. But I don't feel it.
You think NS2 has to change to stay good. I thought the game had matured to a good state, carefully balanced out by its developers over the course of years. I really thought we had the perfectly balanced state in an asymmetrical game, a small miracle. That really was what I told my friends, we have two totally different teams, but they are each others equal. Maybe Hivestats are proving me wrong, I haven't checked for a long time now, but it never felt more balanced before, so I didn't see the need to check (I did that very often before).
I did hope you would iron out the technical kinks, make it a better game, carefully and thoughtfully change and test little things, step by step.
For me, it is now a game that is straining my computer over it's limits and is out of balance because of 120 gameplay changes.
I am a medium skilled player at best, crippled by a meager PC and sometimes mere stupidity. I enjoyed most of my ~1200 hours of NS2. I know that I disliked CompMod whenever I played it, but I thought, who cares, that's why it is called CompMod, because it is for the competitive group.
But now it is vanilla.
And I don't enjoy it. At all. I've played some rounds and I hated every single one.
I hate khammanding now. I hate how everything is tied to biomass now even more. I dislike how the fade sounds. I hate how the competitive players reign even more now than before. How one pro fade player can rule the field even more than before, teamwork not needed. Maybe I'll get used to all of it. But right now, I WANT to like it, but I hate it.
tl;dr:
Why change so brutally what was carefully and elaborately adjusted to its state?
Why force competitive mod on all of us?
:_(
Shadowstep
You will be missed.
Good thing metabolize is here to fill the void =P.
The UWE link goes to the jpg (I thought it should be the front page of UWE/NS2. Also the youtube link goes to :
https://www.youtube.com... (not ISE's video).
The fadeballs were not particularly imbalanced, but they were boring and repetetive and there was basically no reason not to use it. Nowadays you have way more variety in terms of lifeforms and it makes for more interesting games.
This is why we have hmg in compmod as well, it's not for balance, hell no. It's to improve gameplay - and I for one, welcome it.
Balance is important, but never value it over gameplay.
Good Fade players have always dominated if their competition wasn't up to snuff. Metabolize doesn't really change that. Now they get something that has a chance of seeing play, because shadowstep was hardly ever a factor before. As nice as it was, it was never as gamechanging as bile, leap, umbra, or even charge. If you could've spared the res to get the mostly useless Fade research over any other possible upgrade, the game had already gone on far too long, or you were so far ahead of the marines, it didn't matter.
Shadowstep will be missed, as well as old vortex (now that was a gamechanging ability).
As an Aussie player, unfortunately we've had CompMod forced on us for many months now due to it being on most of our servers. I think it's a great mod for the competitive community, but seriously...a big WTF on forcing all of the pubs onto this?
What I would like to know from CDT is why all of a sudden you felt is completely necessary to rework the entire resource and purchasing system? I wasn't aware the old system was so broken it had to be completely redone? Surely if it was so broken it would have been addressed sooner....
Gorge Tunnels - 1 marine can easily take this down before the alien team have enough time to respond.... Seriously????? Why don't you do the same to phase gates as well?
I will continue to play, but this is very disappointing.
NS2 is an assymetrical game - and gorgetunnels do not correspond to phasegates for many reasons, and they're not supposed to either.
Why shouldn't a single marine be able to kill a tunnel? That's my question to you. Tunnels are primarily used as huge-ass cysts, to spread infestation.
It's like the earbleeding skulk jump sound is back with a vengeance. Please devs, change it back to how it sounded before. I don't know how you guys test this but i play normal stereo. 2.0. X-Fi Titanium.
Ouch.
I agree with this statement, there's only one thing that bothers me, the Fade sound. Everything else is perfectly fine in my opinion. Does this sound is in the CompMod by the way? I didn't notice this before then...
And GL's only cost 30 to research?
No wonder this patch came unexpected, they skipped the playtesting lol
Rubbish.
1. I mentioned the gorge tunnel issue
2. Why completely overhaul the resourcing system which was working fine
3. No, tunnels are primarily used to move quickly from point A to B. Spreading infestation is just an added benefit of a tunnel. For 1 marine to have the ability to very quickly take down a whole teams travel route is ridiculous. At what point was it ever known that Gorge Tunnels were OP and had to be nerfed?
Onos nerfed? 25% less damage reduction is absolutely huge. Worst patch ever :P
Yeah I flashed my first onos last night v.v I'm blaming you, CDT!
Your first Onos ever?
But I can alt tab now without the game freezing which is nice
I hope you know this is an event to celebrate, much like the first message posted on a forum.
What loading? Main menu, first loading when you join a server, mapchange or everything I stated there?
It wouldn't be hard to make such a post, list the changes in bullet form, and ask 'This is what we're looking at doing, what are your thoughts? Do you agree/disagree, and if so why?'. Yeah, you might get long threads to wade through, but you also might read a perspective you hadn't considered or seen, where you find yourselves saying 'good point, ok lets alter that change and test it in the next PT'.
It's important to have responsibility for final say (too many cooks, et al.) but more input from a greater range of people equally invested in the game can only be a good thing.
Of course if there was a 'Proposed balance changes for 268' thread please ignore this and direct me to the thread, thanks.
This is not an imageboard. -asjdfqwenrlknk
Also, if you can't balance it evenly, winning in competitive matches is just a matter of "Who gets to play aliens first?". eg. you have a winrate of 60% for Marines, you throw a coin, and the team that gets Marines first will win the event (which could be seen in NS2WC btw., Marines won 90% of the time (I didn't really calculate that, but of all the games played, aliens won 2!)). And you don't want anyone to take away the price because of a coin toss. That's just an example of course. It's just that games tend to go bad when the balancing is bad.
Another example gameplay/balancing: Building a super Onos that Onocides and destroys one complete base with it would be hilarious gameplay. Or endgame umbra that swallows 100% bullet damage. Absolutely hilarious. And I would totally vote for it IF the marines get a mechanic that counters it. It is called good game design: If you include a mechanic, you need to include a counter. That does make it interesting, everything else is just meh. I think pre-268, NS2 had a very good mechanic-countermechanic relation. For every shtick the marines got, the aliens got a counter-shtick (and vice versa of course), and both shticks were timed in a way that they, with fair teams, got on the field at about the same time. In my opinion, this is broken now, and it is imho in great parts because of the fade changes. This does segues nicely to my next point:
As to "CompMod is not a valid complaint", the feeling that most of the posters try to express with this the following (I guess):
The game SCALES very different with skill. You can see that all the time in the different divisions for example, and it is an experience UWE had to learn somewhere on the way: If you balance something for low skill, you break it for high skill, and vice versa. That's one of the reasons it is so delicate: You have to appeal to the high skillers who devote thousand hours and heart and sweat and play competitive, and you have to cater to the pubbers who play on weekends, or an hour in the evening. And ideally to the rookie who wants to find out what all the fuzz is about.
Since this version feels a lot like CompMod, it feels like it is catering to the competitive guys only. The feeling for me is, this is a revision for the pros. Handling and balancing is for the pros. Pubbers and rookies are not considered. Or in other words: It is balanced for high skill now, broken for low skill.
Which is not really a suprise, since coders and playtesters are most probably not medium skilled. But people who played A LOT! Like in A LOT!
Maybe it isn't even such a big deal anymore, since there are not many new players anymore, and those who come don't stay. The only people left on the servers will be the hardcore fans, so it probably makes sense to cater to them. I just find it sad that this version is accelerating that trend even more.
btw, I love the NS1 HMG.
I hope I didn't bore you too much with this far out theories.
@Hobocop: I khammed a round or two, and I was cursing a lot, because you can't research an ability if you don't have the biomass required. It probably won't matter in too many rounds, but before 268 you could research an ability, even though it was not active because you didn't have the biomass necessary. That's what I meant with tying abilities to biomass. I can't time abilities anymore.
@Pelargir : You don't think the khammander changes are gameplay changes? Ask yourself, someone khamming 268 for the first time without compmod experience or explanations will not find the gameplay changed? Then I guess our definitions of "gameplay" differ.
And now to something completely different: 268 gave me the lowest framerate I ever had. Like, ever. I can't remember having 3 fps ever before. And it's rollercoasting like crazy, I get 3 fps, make 2 steps back and have 60 fps again.
Oh, and regarding the 90% win rate of NS2WC: I know that the frenchies won the final round with some all-in french cheese. The point still holds, balance is important.
I just read through, I guess it does sound very negative. I have to emphasize how much I admire the CDT for their efforts, and I am not trying to insult their work. You guys and gals are doing a tremendous amount of work for free, and deserve more praise than we can offer in this forum. I think we all know and thank you for your passion for NS2. Like I said before, it is impossible to cater to everyone, and some people will always be unsatisfied. Nonetheless, even those (like me) who feel left behind have to sound constructive criticism if possible.
i realize nobody really paid attention to this confusing post, but i'm gonna go ahead and point out that this is nonsense anyway. in the scenario you're describing the damage from the fades is completely inconsequential, and i suspect the gate would actually go down slower due to this change. the fades are simply not a relevant factor when trying to destroy the gate if you've got three skulks on it already.
obviously, a completely imbalanced gameplay, is bad gameplay. So you cannot sacrifice balance completely - or it makes bad gameplay. With balance, comes good gameplay, but there are other ways to improve gameplay than just balance is what I'm saying. So I'm not trying to lessen the importance of good balance - I'm just saying it has to come second. If you truly wanted absolute perfect balance, then play a symetrical game like MvM or SwS. But that's not what we want is it?
You use the word feeling a lot here. And I maintain, that these feelings, that a lot of people have not just you, are sprung from the fact that they admitted these changes are from compmod. If they had just said it was their own ideas or that it was from a completely different mod, then there would not have been so much hate against it. The changes in question, are not essential to competetive play imo. Maybe with the exception of the gorge tunnel, that thing was way too hard to kill in a competetive setting.
I just wish people would judge these changes on their own merits, rather than on the fact that it came from a specific mod.
Did you even read the other post where I already answered this? You don't need to post this again. One IP is pre-placed and the other one is randomly placed in code.