Top Ten Annoyances
Malachi_NGC
Join Date: 2012-11-13 Member: 170530Members
Join Date: 2012-11-13 Member: 170530Members
More an assorted laundry list, these are my top issues in no particular order:
No Steam Profile
Unlike most other games I own, you can't conveniently access another player's steam profile from, say, the scoreboard. And while you can resort to Shift-tab -> View Players -> Current Game, that's clumsy at best.
Reload Jam
This bug has been around for at least 1-1/2 years. Occasionally you cannot reload your rifle, despite having plenty of ammo. Quickly switching to another weapon and back clears the jam, but this not-so-minor quirk should have been fixed long ago.
Picking Up Weapons
In no other game have I had such drama simply trying to pick up a dropped weapon off the floor - a key strategy in saving resources. NS2 doesn't even have an 'auto pickup' feature. Often enough I end up dropping my only primary weapon, leaving me defenseless for the inevitable incoming attack. Caused by weapons disappearing when dropped along with players vying for them, and exacerbated when multiple weapons are dropped in a pile. Please see CS:GO for how weapon drops/pickups should be handled.
Jumping
Jumping, especially crouch-jumping, is finicky. It's difficult to crouch-jump up onto a handrail without finding yourself automatically jumping off the other side. Jumping works well in other games - just not in NS2.
Crosshair Options
Even the most basic crosshair options are completely absent from NS2. Want to change size? Color? You can do it, just don't look in Options. User-unfriendly to say the least, you have to hand-edit a graphics file to make it happen.
Player Mute/Silence/Gag
Player mute? Check. But what about chat spam? The absence of this was highlighted in a recent game where more than one teammate continually spammed chat with derrogatory, inflammatory, racist remarks. Need a quick idea on how to fix this? Have the scoreboard 'speaker' icon cycle through all the options (normal -> mute -> silence -> gag), even adding a small, red 'a' over the corner to show when chat is blocked. And NS2 shouldn't forget mutes after the round ends - a small detail, but it sure feels sloppy.
Player Stats
It would be nice, even if it only showed up in console, how much damage you did to the player that killed you - not the same as the total damage you did that last life.
Alltalk
Alltalk during 'Waiting For Players' and 'Waiting For Commanders' should be automatic. Many times I've been cut off from a Ready Room conversation just because I'm trying to get on a team.
Spectator Delay
To reduce ghosting, spectators should have at least a 2 minute delay in their feed.
Alt-Tab Quirks
There's a few things that can happen when you alt-tab out of game. Sometimes after returning, you will suddenly find yourself pointing straight up at the ceiling. Other times, all the sounds will at first play extremely loudly - then afterwards go back to normal. Also, I've occasionally noticed phantom sounds - like welding/building sounds eminating from empty space (which if you run far enough away will have disappeared on your return).
Seperate Commander Ranks
Ok, I'm throwing in one more - a feature request. We need a seperate ranks for commanders! It's a completely different skill that is specialized. And just looking at hours played and other such stats is no guarantee that they're any good at commanding - let alone ever commanded.
Thanks!
No Steam Profile
Unlike most other games I own, you can't conveniently access another player's steam profile from, say, the scoreboard. And while you can resort to Shift-tab -> View Players -> Current Game, that's clumsy at best.
Reload Jam
This bug has been around for at least 1-1/2 years. Occasionally you cannot reload your rifle, despite having plenty of ammo. Quickly switching to another weapon and back clears the jam, but this not-so-minor quirk should have been fixed long ago.
Picking Up Weapons
In no other game have I had such drama simply trying to pick up a dropped weapon off the floor - a key strategy in saving resources. NS2 doesn't even have an 'auto pickup' feature. Often enough I end up dropping my only primary weapon, leaving me defenseless for the inevitable incoming attack. Caused by weapons disappearing when dropped along with players vying for them, and exacerbated when multiple weapons are dropped in a pile. Please see CS:GO for how weapon drops/pickups should be handled.
Jumping
Jumping, especially crouch-jumping, is finicky. It's difficult to crouch-jump up onto a handrail without finding yourself automatically jumping off the other side. Jumping works well in other games - just not in NS2.
Crosshair Options
Even the most basic crosshair options are completely absent from NS2. Want to change size? Color? You can do it, just don't look in Options. User-unfriendly to say the least, you have to hand-edit a graphics file to make it happen.
Player Mute/Silence/Gag
Player mute? Check. But what about chat spam? The absence of this was highlighted in a recent game where more than one teammate continually spammed chat with derrogatory, inflammatory, racist remarks. Need a quick idea on how to fix this? Have the scoreboard 'speaker' icon cycle through all the options (normal -> mute -> silence -> gag), even adding a small, red 'a' over the corner to show when chat is blocked. And NS2 shouldn't forget mutes after the round ends - a small detail, but it sure feels sloppy.
Player Stats
It would be nice, even if it only showed up in console, how much damage you did to the player that killed you - not the same as the total damage you did that last life.
Alltalk
Alltalk during 'Waiting For Players' and 'Waiting For Commanders' should be automatic. Many times I've been cut off from a Ready Room conversation just because I'm trying to get on a team.
Spectator Delay
To reduce ghosting, spectators should have at least a 2 minute delay in their feed.
Alt-Tab Quirks
There's a few things that can happen when you alt-tab out of game. Sometimes after returning, you will suddenly find yourself pointing straight up at the ceiling. Other times, all the sounds will at first play extremely loudly - then afterwards go back to normal. Also, I've occasionally noticed phantom sounds - like welding/building sounds eminating from empty space (which if you run far enough away will have disappeared on your return).
Seperate Commander Ranks
Ok, I'm throwing in one more - a feature request. We need a seperate ranks for commanders! It's a completely different skill that is specialized. And just looking at hours played and other such stats is no guarantee that they're any good at commanding - let alone ever commanded.
Thanks!
Comments
Sometimes when you jump into a tunnel and try to emerge the other side, the whole screen goes black and holding the map key shows you moving outside the map!
In regards to auto pickup, NS2+ has it but it can backfire on you, a jetpacker was asking me to weld him but I didn't have a welder I wasn't looking at him when he dropped his one and I ran off for 2 minutes calling me a thief and such
Only realised after I picked it up but by then he already died and spawned back at base :P
Crouch jumping has always been awkward in this game at best, why would raising your legs cause your viewpoint and character to go down faster?
The scoreboard has felt unfinished and uninspired since the launch of the game.
Why do we still have build numbers in the upper left of the game? This isn't a beta, but it definitely feels unfinished with that hovering there in every moment of the game.
The ingame interface still scales terribly for lower resolutions.
Steam workshop is a terrible replacement for serverside modding, servers no longer feel unique as they all feed from the same pool of mods. Plus it often causes servers to crash when Steam has a hiccup.
Whatever happened to material transparency and the proposed 1st person gestating?
Whatever happened to marine weapons having an alternate fire ability? The rifle-bash was originally a part of this system but it was never touched on again, leaving one weapon with an alternate attack with no other marine weapon having it. (Aside from the pistol having the laser with a slower fire rate with higher damage until that was taken out too)
I think the steamoverlay->view players works perfect, not clumsy at all imo.
Maybe I've just grown acustomed, but I havn't experienced that bug in a long while. It resurfaced briefly in some patches and then disappeared in the next - idk.
I happen to HATE the way CS:GO does it. In cs 1.6 I had to write a script to alter it to my satisfaction, which was later considered a cheat by some LOL. NS2+ does have an 'auto pickup' feature.
You don't jump higher with crouch jump. Once you realize this, it's pretty intuitive and works as intended imo.
Or go to the workshop and find a finished one. In contrast, in most other FPS, you are extremely limited in crosshair options, because you only have slight adjustments on the basic ones. This includes big titles like CS:GO, quake, unreal tournament etc. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
No I don't agree with this. That's not the case in any other game afaik either. Unless you're thinking of feeds like hltv. And I don't think it's an issue in general at all. In pubs, I've never had the problem. In gathers, ghosting is pointless. In scrims, even more pointless. In an official match, only the caster and ref is allowed to spec, so ghosting shouldn't be an issue there either. I'd find it far more annoying to be forced in a 2 minute delay. I'd be fine with a server-side mod of course, but please keep it off the gather servers
As much as you are a fanboy you can't say it's perfect, the player list in 'view players' uses their Steam names while the scoreboard uses their NS2 names. Leading to instances where you can have a group of people without any clue as to who an exact person is(without personally questioning them). This also makes it easier to smurf which is a detriment to low skill servers. A workaround could be having a scoreboard which includes someone's steam avatar so you could match the name on the list with the avatar in the scoreboard.
Can't fix it without any solid reproduction steps, still holds all this time later
This is an option in NS2+
This is something I've wanted to do for almost
a year, it's waiting for approval
Also something I have wanted to do
The sound bug is fixed for next build.
Edit: If you recognize the steam account, it's usually not very difficult to deduce which player it belongs to in my experience.
As long as you turn off the option to 'auto switch to picked up weapons', CS:GO works as perfect as I can imagine, has never caused me drama, I've never accidentally dropped my weapon while trying to pick up another, and never been killed while standing over a weapon wondering what happend after a failed attempt to pick it up but instead dropped mine.
Of course not, but you should be able to get up onto higher surfaces - standard in many other games. And jumping up onto something shouldn't ceremoniously catapult you off the other side (which is just weird - unless you're playing Portal 1/2).
First, thanks for the quick reply. I will try to figure out how to reproduce it. I suspect it may be triggered with a combination of buttons. If by some miracle I am successful I will definitely let you know.
What's really awesome is if you have ns2+ on, and "autoweapon pickup" enabled, you can hold down the drop key over say... your shotgun and a dropped shotgun, and "drag" them both back to another area.
From an alien perspective it looks very silly when marines are jumping.
Jetpack + GL > everything.
I haven't played marines in over 2 years now btw.
Quake Live has a good range of crosshairs of all shapes, and you can customize the size, color, brightness, etc.
GL spam - An annoyance since day one that will probably never go away. To me it's one of the most annoying weapons in the Marine arsenal. 3+ Marines GL spamming a doorway makes it pretty much impossible to get through.
Pointless edges, lips, bars, etc - There are WAY too many things in the maps that seem designed specifically to get players caught on them. Like the X bars covering the vent at water on mineshaft, or all the little edges that stick out at nearly every door frame in the game. Mineshaft is actually one of the worst maps for this stuff, but Jambi and Tram are just as bad. I especially hate Repair on Tram, can't even begin to count how many times I've been caught on the props in that room just long enough to present a nice stationary target for a Marine to kill me.
Gaps in skill level - It's extremely boring when one or two people in the server are basically a high level pro in terms of skill, while everyone else on the server is basically a rookie. When the top players have 20+ kills before anyone else in the server has 5... There's almost no point in even trying to play. If I'm on their team, I spend all my time looking for enemies to kill and am bored to death... If I'm not on their team, I get raped and spend most of the game waiting to spawn, and am bored to death.
---
I also have to agree 100% with
Muting - When you mute someone it really needs to mute their text chat also. I've found that most people who troll, if they realize they've been muted, will just switch over to spamming text chat. Which can be really tough to ignore (for me anyway) because it could be your team or an admin saying something important.
Different commander badges for Marines/Aliens - There is such a vast difference between commanding the two that I'm honestly surprised they only released one badge to begin with. I'd imagine most people (myself included) are decent at commanding one side yet horrible at commanding the other. I also think that you shouldn't get the badge unless you win a certain # of games... If someone commands for say 100 hours and loses every single time, why give them a badge showing them to be a good commander.
Steam master server browser support - It would be SO nice to be able to see what servers are populated before launching NS2. I don't know how many times I launch NS2 (or NS2 combat) to play, only to see the browser and realize there are no local servers populated, so I close the game and play something else...
Getting killed around corners - I honestly don't know if this is the hitreg, bad netcode, laggy players, etc... Whatever the reason though it's extremely annoying (and seems to happen a lot more with 300+ ping players) When you're a skulk, you see a Marine enter the room, so you dart around the corner before they even look your direction, only to die after travelling 50 feet down that hallway because on their screen you were still sitting out in the open. (which should NEVER happen when the Skulk has 50 ping and the Marine has 200+) I don't remember games suffering from this crap back in the old days (CS, HL2, CoD4, etc)... Sometimes it even feels like NS2 has the same lag compensation crap that the newer CoD titles do.
I dunno I still run into the problem in NS2 occasionally, and in NS2 combat it is extremely bad. It seems to happen more to the ones that get destroyed after you reach the 10 clog limit.
Very frustrating to be an Onos who can't get past a completely clear doorway because of "ghost clogs"
The repro steps are know. Any clog that dies leaves a phantom (client side) collision clog around. This will lead to an incoherence between the server and the client and you will get a prediction error. If you leave the area and come back, its fixed for you (as the phantom collision box is only on the client).
Fixing that was attempted multiple times, with no luck sadly. If anybody from the modding community wants to help out, they are more than welcome.
It happens rarely but it is there, must get you a screenshot of this happening, if you jump in a tunnel and emerge from the other side (This seems to happen most if you navigate through the tunnel really fast), the screen goes black but your still in-game and if you run around with your map open, you can roam outside the tunnel albeit in a straight line with no way to get out other than typing kill in console, soon as its replicated I'll screeny and PM you it.