@SantaClaws
Leap is very strong if used correctly. I was just thinking in terms of initial fun for new players.
I dont really mind it being a hive upgrade but I feel many people will just feel hopeless if it takes too much time to get.
In the end I just want an ability similiar to leap which allows rookies to cover a great distance without having to master walljumping.
Walljumping + Leap should still be more effective but the alternative should help players who have not yet learn or are not willing to learn it because they are playing it for fun.
I dont really think in terms of competitve at all because if too strong we can just change that in the comp mod.
My friends played Ns2 and they were struggeling to approach the marines. In the end they felt like running into death to just spawn again and useless for the team.
I understand that skulks are supposed to be played more cunningly and ambushes can be very strong but from my own experience I can tell you that ambushes dont work for new players. They hide above the ceiling get shoot or they do a decent ambush but fail to connect the first bite and I can can just outrun them.
I would love an option for new players to get back in range without having to walljump again. Its more about the "WOW AWESOME I CAN LEAP LIKE A TIGER" effect than 100 % balance which we will never achieve. If its that bad it could be reverted anyway.
However, this is just a idea of mine and it could be totally retarded and unfun to play:
A lot of rookies left to weep,
I said to them here take a leap,
But the idea was major shit,
Cause rookie marines now nothing hit.
Why in rhyme? Because I am waiting for my food to get delivered and need distraction.
No matchmaking->no fun->no players->no matchmaking...
Matchmaking? You mean like skill based matchmaking? I've never seen a game with a playerbase this low gain anything from ranked matchmaking. Right now, Evolve is unplayable because they just implemented that with 500 people to matchmake. You spend hours in matchmaking with no game. And even then the matchmaker has no choice but to give up and place you with whoever it can find, so the "skill based" portion of it doesn't do anything, really. The longest time reported is 4 hours. Dawn of War 2's matchmaker became worthless as soon as the playerbase numbers dwindled under 1k. It still gave you games, but it was with anyone it could afford to find, closely matched games were massively rare. I'll take this game's simple setup where I can just go wherever the players are congregated.
Nosgoth had 3k players last time I was playing it. Wait times to start playing were a minimum of 15 minutes for me, and average skilled player. Worse for the high and low end. Then once I was put into a match 4/5 times they were just a complete stack. I still enjoyed the game, stacked or not, but the minimum of a 15 minute wait is what made me stop playing.
In comparison, I have found a good community server where I have many fun and balanced games. I don't have to wait to be put in a server, and unlike many other ns2 servers the rounds start quickly.
Nosgoth had 3k players last time I was playing it. Wait times to start playing were a minimum of 15 minutes for me, and average skilled player. Worse for the high and low end. Then once I was put into a match 4/5 times they were just a complete stack. I still enjoyed the game, stacked or not, but the minimum of a 15 minute wait is what made me stop playing.
In comparison, I have found a good community server where I have many fun and balanced games. I don't have to wait to be put in a server, and unlike many other ns2 servers the rounds start quickly.
Right, nosgoth suffered big losses because it forced people in that rank que. But NS2 doesn't need to do that. You can have matchmaking on the side and keep the regular serverbrowser. Just like Dirty Bomb or CS:GO does. -So that's an important distinction I feel.
It might even be worth considering, to have a matchmaking system that allows you to play on a pub server while you wait for it to fill up?
You can have matchmaking on the side and keep the regular serverbrowser. Just like Dirty Bomb or CS:GO does. -So that's an important distinction I feel.
It might even be worth considering, to have a matchmaking system that allows you to play on a pub server while you wait for it to fill up?
At that point, I question if matchmaking is worth the development time. Ns2 has had only a server browser for so long, would people use the matchmaking? An example being the "organized play" tab in the menu that was supposed to allow in game gathers.
You can have matchmaking on the side and keep the regular serverbrowser. Just like Dirty Bomb or CS:GO does. -So that's an important distinction I feel.
It might even be worth considering, to have a matchmaking system that allows you to play on a pub server while you wait for it to fill up?
At that point, I question if matchmaking is worth the development time. Ns2 has had only a server browser for so long, would people use the matchmaking? An example being the "organized play" tab in the menu that was supposed to allow in game gathers.
Well that organized play function didn't work... Not surprising that people didn't use it. And even if it had worked, what I just proposed is very different. You'd actually be able to play, instead of standing idle in the menu.
No matchmaking->no fun->no players->no matchmaking...
Matchmaking? You mean like skill based matchmaking? I've never seen a game with a playerbase this low gain anything from ranked matchmaking. Right now, Evolve is unplayable because they just implemented that with 500 people to matchmake. You spend hours in matchmaking with no game. And even then the matchmaker has no choice but to give up and place you with whoever it can find, so the "skill based" portion of it doesn't do anything, really. The longest time reported is 4 hours. Dawn of War 2's matchmaker became worthless as soon as the playerbase numbers dwindled under 1k. It still gave you games, but it was with anyone it could afford to find, closely matched games were massively rare. I'll take this game's simple setup where I can just go wherever the players are congregated.
Yes, matchmaking currently would be useless and that's exactly what I said:
No matchmaking->no fun->no players->no matchmaking...
But it'd be usefull when there where few thousand players around. Without it, great number of players where lost/slaughtered by very high skilled players (especially those stacking bast...).
I called it matchmaking, but it's not really necessary. A simple system would be enough that wouldn't let play the best players with the worst. Just divide Hive skills in 3 ranges:
low skill (25%) - medium skill (50%) - high skill(25%)
(% are an examples - it should be picked reasonably looking at the stats)
Low skill should NEVER play with high skilled (excluding community servers of course) - it's one of the main reasons people quit playing NS2. One very good player in LOW-MED server is usually making the match pointless and you can predict the result very easily, not to mention the irritation of being constantly abused.
Standard server would have to declare a tag of LOW-MED only or MED-HIGH only.
Yes, but it'd be nice to implement something similar, especially before another bundel, going F2P or anytime you expect a lot of new players. I think that with 1k players it'd work without problems after some experiments with the %numbers (Hive skill range) accordingly. This is not really a big segregation as most of players (medium skill range) could play in every available server. It's only segregation the lowest from the highest and giving a choice to an average player: do you want to compete with best OR do you want to have few hours of fun after hard day in your job.
At the same time: hide the Hive points. The skill indicator of your current skill in main menu is really all you'd need: LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH and you know what servers you can join. Just hide every shitty and useless information you show and feed bad habits of some bad personalities (including badges).
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
I'm actually totally in favor for rookie only servers, and there is even a trello item for this.
Basically, current rookie friendly servers should be replaced by rookie only servers. Rookie can go into all servers, but veterans can not go into rookie only servers.
Now what exactly the definition of a rookie is can be debated. perhaps hive level 4-5? (thats 20-25 hours of play) But thats imho a detail.
Its also vastly more useful on free weekends and sales, as it will be easier to fill up those servers.
I'm actually totally in favor for rookie only servers, and there is even a trello item for this.
Basically, current rookie friendly servers should be replaced by rookie only servers. Rookie can go into all servers, but veterans can not go into rookie only servers.
Now what exactly the definition of a rookie is can be debated. perhaps hive level 4-5? (thats 20-25 hours of play) But thats imho a detail.
Its also vastly more useful on free weekends and sales, as it will be easier to fill up those servers.
Can they have spec slots that veterans can join to watch? Love to be a fly on the wall there Also, specs could provide guidance during a game.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited September 2015
I have a "casual" mod in development, called Evolved which is already available on steam workshop.
More testing/servers and feedback would be much appreciated!
For starter, Skulks can perform a mini-leap when jumping on the floor (which also helps rookies discover walljumping "by accident"), while marines start with more armor and a dodge jump to compensate. There are currently over 100 major and minor changes aimed at making learning easier and reducing power snowballing.
@SantaClaws
Leap is very strong if used correctly. I was just thinking in terms of initial fun for new players.
I dont really mind it being a hive upgrade but I feel many people will just feel hopeless if it takes too much time to get.
In the end I just want an ability similiar to leap which allows rookies to cover a great distance without having to master walljumping.
Walljumping + Leap should still be more effective but the alternative should help players who have not yet learn or are not willing to learn it because they are playing it for fun.
I dont really think in terms of competitve at all because if too strong we can just change that in the comp mod.
My friends played Ns2 and they were struggeling to approach the marines. In the end they felt like running into death to just spawn again and useless for the team.
I understand that skulks are supposed to be played more cunningly and ambushes can be very strong but from my own experience I can tell you that ambushes dont work for new players. They hide above the ceiling get shoot or they do a decent ambush but fail to connect the first bite and I can can just outrun them.
I would love an option for new players to get back in range without having to walljump again. Its more about the "WOW AWESOME I CAN LEAP LIKE A TIGER" effect than 100 % balance which we will never achieve. If its that bad it could be reverted anyway.
However, this is just a idea of mine and it could be totally retarded and unfun to play:
A lot of rookies left to weep,
I said to them here take a leap,
But the idea was major shit,
Cause rookie marines now nothing hit.
Why in rhyme? Because I am waiting for my food to get delivered and need distraction.
I fully agree with you, a skulk that's required to research this innate ability baffles me to be honest, especially at biomass 4, skulks should innately know how to leap, I'd rather they buff parasite, move it to biomass 4 and make it damage over time similar lerk bite to what this would make the skull much less punishing to play without making skulks overtly OP, this shouldn't make it unbalanced for the vets as most vets know, key to good skulk play is ambush tactics and pack play and for rookies they should find skulk play much less deterrable in the beginning which possibly leads to this snowball effect of bad rookie experiences atleast for alien side anyhow.
Feel free to start a poll if you are more interested in seeing this feature possibly implemented in the future!
I'm actually totally in favor for rookie only servers, and there is even a trello item for this.
Basically, current rookie friendly servers should be replaced by rookie only servers. Rookie can go into all servers, but veterans can not go into rookie only servers.
Now what exactly the definition of a rookie is can be debated. perhaps hive level 4-5? (thats 20-25 hours of play) But thats imho a detail.
Its also vastly more useful on free weekends and sales, as it will be easier to fill up those servers.
Rookie only server is good idea as long as there is someone more experienced and able to share his knowledge in friendly manner around that will spend a lot of time in this boring kindergarden - and it's not possible to find so many samaritans with so much free time. It just won't work.
And even if it would - it won't really help SO much at keeping more players around. Because the real issue is providing friendly environment all the time and not only for few first hours. You won't keep more player as long as won't provide some kind of separation between bad and best players. The skill difference between players is very problematic in a typical horizontal shooters. In a game like NS, where the difference of skill factor is much more painful you just can't avoid the subject and expect that any other fancy features will keep more players around.
Rookie only server is good idea as long as there is someone more experienced and able to share his knowledge in friendly manner around that will spend a lot of time in this boring kindergarden - and it's not possible to find so many samaritans with so much free time. It just won't work.
And even if it would - it won't really help SO much at keeping more players around. Because the real issue is providing friendly environment all the time and not only for few first hours. You won't keep more player as long as won't provide some kind of separation between bad and best players. The skill difference between players is very problematic in a typical horizontal shooters. In a game like NS, where the difference of skill factor is much more painful you just can't avoid the subject and expect that any other fancy features will keep more players around.
The argument of needing guidance on rookie servers comes up a lot. I think its actually wrong.
If you look at other games, lets take DOTA 2, rookie servers dont have veterans on them teaching stuff. They create an easy environment where people can learn the basics of the game without getting destroyed. In your first hours you dont need to know the build orders and strategies of comp play. You will have enough to do with just learning the basic movement and map layouts.
And of course the second part you say is true. I hope a better "quick join" button that people actually use will help with that by keeping people of similar skill on the the same servers. But it might not be enough.
So, by rookie only servers you mean servers where new players learn mechanics. I thought it'll be more like introduction to the real gameplay of NS2. Then, you can completely ignore the influence of these servers on the number of players at all.
Quick join solution is not a solution for a simple reason: one good player joining the server "manually" without using the button can and WILL ruin the experience for the rest of players. You'd have to create a mesh of servers that could be joined only by using the Quick Join button (bad idea for building a healthy community servers). Also, I admit that I personally don't like any automatic way of forcing anything, so a variation of solution from my previous post or anything that would let you make the choice and still keeping it simple is my choice.
Well, if you care enough to play in a rookie tournament then you probably invested some time and already feel good with the game. But will that work for an average rookie server full of "let's try the game" players? I doubt but naturally may be wrong.
Well, if you care enough to play in a rookie tournament then you probably invested some time and already feel good with the game. But will that work for an average rookie server full of "let's try the game" players? I doubt but naturally may be wrong.
Guess I needed to find the link.
None of the 12 players had ever played ns2 before. They say it in video, and in the video description. It is honestly comical at times, but they did figure out more on their own than I thought they would.
Actually the situation of why skulks feel so weak and not enjoyable for new players was brought up and analyzed inside the CDT some month ago.
The overall result we came up with where basically these two points:
New players don't understand or get taught by the game that aliens (specially skulks) are hit and run and depend on setting up ambushes to kill marines. You should not try to dodge bullets at all ! Instead mark the marine with parasite to track his movements and set up an ambush so you are able to land one bite even before the marine is able to react. Another tip is also to not jump like a maniac around the marine in close combat but instead to just strafe around him. That increases your possibility to hit the marine while he is unable to hit you. Overall the solution brought up to solve this point was to create better tutorial actually teaching new players how to play the skulk properly.
The really unintuitive game mechanics of wall jumping. Wall jumping is needed to accelerate properly as skulk otherwise indeed you are pretty slow. But this mechanic is as said really unintuitive as it goes against the basic understanding of physic and gets never really taught by the game at all. The ideas how to solve this point go from removing wall jumping over added a general speed boost for jumping to better tutorial.
@Shurakan hopefully these points fit to your impression
Have you thought about making leap a standard ability instead of a hive upgrade?
The game would need to be adjusted acoording to this change but I think it helps new players to some extent. Also its awesome if you are a marine and a skulk flies by you. Its enjoyable scary.
leap is super powerful
as someone who enjoys skulk play the most of any class/weapon. it absolutely makes skulks viable again mid to late game against shittier shotgunners and 2 2 marines with ok aim.
sometimes you gotta bite from every direction.
my favorite skulk moment recently was someone was building the cafeteria extractor from the top.
i come barreling in, from bar, top speed, bite him once in the face, once in the back, and finally once in the feet while he was falling off the extractor.
He literally didn't know what hit him.
it was adorable, he was just like... "wtf killed me?" in chat
I have a "casual" mod in development, called Evolved which is already available on steam workshop.
More testing/servers and feedback would be much appreciated!
For starter, Skulks can perform a mini-leap when jumping on the floor (which also helps rookies discover walljumping "by accident"), while marines start with more armor and a dodge jump to compensate. There are currently over 100 major and minor changes aimed at making learning easier and reducing power snowballing.
you're going to have to give skulks more health too i think.
I have a "casual" mod in development, called Evolved which is already available on steam workshop.
More testing/servers and feedback would be much appreciated!
For starter, Skulks can perform a mini-leap when jumping on the floor (which also helps rookies discover walljumping "by accident"), while marines start with more armor and a dodge jump to compensate. There are currently over 100 major and minor changes aimed at making learning easier and reducing power snowballing.
you're going to have to give skulks more health too i think.
make it an actual slug fest maybe.
Skulks do start with 130 total health in my mod.
Nobody likes being forced to play as a fodder, especially when marines can kill a Skulk almost instantly late game. What feels worse is getting stomped without Leap. With some compensations to marines (such as more starting armor, or better Sentries), Leap could be made available on one Hive. I think a lot of edge cases in NS2 like this still need more attention to help reduce new player rage quitting.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
The reason why most rookies want help is simply because most on the server are not rookies.
It can be very refreshing to see 2 teams of full rookies go at it.
It is also fun to put a lower div team at them at times. (assuming for the moment that its a pcw scene and the rookie team knows whats it getting into)
Rookies can come up with complete crazy stuff which makes no sense. And lower div teams can be baffled long enough at times with 'what the hell is going on' to even have it work.
I have a "casual" mod in development, called Evolved which is already available on steam workshop.
More testing/servers and feedback would be much appreciated!
For starter, Skulks can perform a mini-leap when jumping on the floor (which also helps rookies discover walljumping "by accident"), while marines start with more armor and a dodge jump to compensate. There are currently over 100 major and minor changes aimed at making learning easier and reducing power snowballing.
you're going to have to give skulks more health too i think.
make it an actual slug fest maybe.
Skulks do start with 130 total health in my mod.
Nobody likes being forced to play as a fodder, especially when marines can kill a Skulk almost instantly late game. What feels worse is getting stomped without Leap. With some compensations to marines (such as more starting armor, or better Sentries), Leap could be made available on one Hive. I think a lot of edge cases in NS2 like this still need more attention to help reduce new player rage quitting.
would it be possible
hear me out now,
to do something like,
every 500 hive points you have drops your damage output by 15 percent?
so at 1000 hive point you're doing 70 percent damage
at 2000 points you're doing 50 percent damage
at 3000 points you're doing 30 percent damage?
i would play the shit out of that mod. you gotta work at it to bring down your enemy, tweak the ratio as necessary.
god, that'd be fun.
can we get someone to implement this? please please pretty please with a cherry on top?
I have a "casual" mod in development, called Evolved which is already available on steam workshop.
More testing/servers and feedback would be much appreciated!
For starter, Skulks can perform a mini-leap when jumping on the floor (which also helps rookies discover walljumping "by accident"), while marines start with more armor and a dodge jump to compensate. There are currently over 100 major and minor changes aimed at making learning easier and reducing power snowballing.
you're going to have to give skulks more health too i think.
make it an actual slug fest maybe.
Skulks do start with 130 total health in my mod.
Nobody likes being forced to play as a fodder, especially when marines can kill a Skulk almost instantly late game. What feels worse is getting stomped without Leap. With some compensations to marines (such as more starting armor, or better Sentries), Leap could be made available on one Hive. I think a lot of edge cases in NS2 like this still need more attention to help reduce new player rage quitting.
would it be possible
hear me out now,
to do something like,
every 500 hive points you have drops your damage output by 15 percent?
so at 1000 hive point you're doing 70 percent damage
at 2000 points you're doing 50 percent damage
at 3000 points you're doing 30 percent damage?
i would play the shit out of that mod. you gotta work at it to bring down your enemy, tweak the ratio as necessary.
god, that'd be fun.
can we get someone to implement this? please please pretty please with a cherry on top?
This was already attempted - or rather you could turn down your own damage manually. And it blows.
Good players will still rek rookie skulks even down to 30% dmg. But once lerks comes out - you can have a very mediocre lerk spike you to death - even though you're hitting most of your shots lerk spike just out dps's you. That's just the lerks, forget about trying to frag the fades..
It's just not a fun or interesting experience imo - and it's not good training either. You develop bad habits with these types of handicaps.
In my opinion, it didn't solve the problem that it seeked out to, instead it just adds new frustrations from my point of view.
Comments
Leap is very strong if used correctly. I was just thinking in terms of initial fun for new players.
I dont really mind it being a hive upgrade but I feel many people will just feel hopeless if it takes too much time to get.
In the end I just want an ability similiar to leap which allows rookies to cover a great distance without having to master walljumping.
Walljumping + Leap should still be more effective but the alternative should help players who have not yet learn or are not willing to learn it because they are playing it for fun.
I dont really think in terms of competitve at all because if too strong we can just change that in the comp mod.
My friends played Ns2 and they were struggeling to approach the marines. In the end they felt like running into death to just spawn again and useless for the team.
I understand that skulks are supposed to be played more cunningly and ambushes can be very strong but from my own experience I can tell you that ambushes dont work for new players. They hide above the ceiling get shoot or they do a decent ambush but fail to connect the first bite and I can can just outrun them.
I would love an option for new players to get back in range without having to walljump again. Its more about the "WOW AWESOME I CAN LEAP LIKE A TIGER" effect than 100 % balance which we will never achieve. If its that bad it could be reverted anyway.
However, this is just a idea of mine and it could be totally retarded and unfun to play:
A lot of rookies left to weep,
I said to them here take a leap,
But the idea was major shit,
Cause rookie marines now nothing hit.
Why in rhyme? Because I am waiting for my food to get delivered and need distraction.
Matchmaking? You mean like skill based matchmaking? I've never seen a game with a playerbase this low gain anything from ranked matchmaking. Right now, Evolve is unplayable because they just implemented that with 500 people to matchmake. You spend hours in matchmaking with no game. And even then the matchmaker has no choice but to give up and place you with whoever it can find, so the "skill based" portion of it doesn't do anything, really. The longest time reported is 4 hours. Dawn of War 2's matchmaker became worthless as soon as the playerbase numbers dwindled under 1k. It still gave you games, but it was with anyone it could afford to find, closely matched games were massively rare. I'll take this game's simple setup where I can just go wherever the players are congregated.
In comparison, I have found a good community server where I have many fun and balanced games. I don't have to wait to be put in a server, and unlike many other ns2 servers the rounds start quickly.
Right, nosgoth suffered big losses because it forced people in that rank que. But NS2 doesn't need to do that. You can have matchmaking on the side and keep the regular serverbrowser. Just like Dirty Bomb or CS:GO does. -So that's an important distinction I feel.
It might even be worth considering, to have a matchmaking system that allows you to play on a pub server while you wait for it to fill up?
Well that organized play function didn't work... Not surprising that people didn't use it. And even if it had worked, what I just proposed is very different. You'd actually be able to play, instead of standing idle in the menu.
No matchmaking->no fun->no players->no matchmaking...
But it'd be usefull when there where few thousand players around. Without it, great number of players where lost/slaughtered by very high skilled players (especially those stacking bast...).
I called it matchmaking, but it's not really necessary. A simple system would be enough that wouldn't let play the best players with the worst. Just divide Hive skills in 3 ranges:
low skill (25%) - medium skill (50%) - high skill(25%)
(% are an examples - it should be picked reasonably looking at the stats)
Low skill should NEVER play with high skilled (excluding community servers of course) - it's one of the main reasons people quit playing NS2. One very good player in LOW-MED server is usually making the match pointless and you can predict the result very easily, not to mention the irritation of being constantly abused.
Standard server would have to declare a tag of LOW-MED only or MED-HIGH only.
At the same time: hide the Hive points. The skill indicator of your current skill in main menu is really all you'd need: LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH and you know what servers you can join. Just hide every shitty and useless information you show and feed bad habits of some bad personalities (including badges).
Basically, current rookie friendly servers should be replaced by rookie only servers. Rookie can go into all servers, but veterans can not go into rookie only servers.
Now what exactly the definition of a rookie is can be debated. perhaps hive level 4-5? (thats 20-25 hours of play) But thats imho a detail.
Its also vastly more useful on free weekends and sales, as it will be easier to fill up those servers.
More testing/servers and feedback would be much appreciated!
For starter, Skulks can perform a mini-leap when jumping on the floor (which also helps rookies discover walljumping "by accident"), while marines start with more armor and a dodge jump to compensate. There are currently over 100 major and minor changes aimed at making learning easier and reducing power snowballing.
I fully agree with you, a skulk that's required to research this innate ability baffles me to be honest, especially at biomass 4, skulks should innately know how to leap, I'd rather they buff parasite, move it to biomass 4 and make it damage over time similar lerk bite to what this would make the skull much less punishing to play without making skulks overtly OP, this shouldn't make it unbalanced for the vets as most vets know, key to good skulk play is ambush tactics and pack play and for rookies they should find skulk play much less deterrable in the beginning which possibly leads to this snowball effect of bad rookie experiences atleast for alien side anyhow.
Feel free to start a poll if you are more interested in seeing this feature possibly implemented in the future!
And even if it would - it won't really help SO much at keeping more players around. Because the real issue is providing friendly environment all the time and not only for few first hours. You won't keep more player as long as won't provide some kind of separation between bad and best players. The skill difference between players is very problematic in a typical horizontal shooters. In a game like NS, where the difference of skill factor is much more painful you just can't avoid the subject and expect that any other fancy features will keep more players around.
The argument of needing guidance on rookie servers comes up a lot. I think its actually wrong.
If you look at other games, lets take DOTA 2, rookie servers dont have veterans on them teaching stuff. They create an easy environment where people can learn the basics of the game without getting destroyed. In your first hours you dont need to know the build orders and strategies of comp play. You will have enough to do with just learning the basic movement and map layouts.
And of course the second part you say is true. I hope a better "quick join" button that people actually use will help with that by keeping people of similar skill on the the same servers. But it might not be enough.
Quick join solution is not a solution for a simple reason: one good player joining the server "manually" without using the button can and WILL ruin the experience for the rest of players. You'd have to create a mesh of servers that could be joined only by using the Quick Join button (bad idea for building a healthy community servers). Also, I admit that I personally don't like any automatic way of forcing anything, so a variation of solution from my previous post or anything that would let you make the choice and still keeping it simple is my choice.
None of the 12 players had ever played ns2 before. They say it in video, and in the video description. It is honestly comical at times, but they did figure out more on their own than I thought they would.
leap is super powerful
as someone who enjoys skulk play the most of any class/weapon. it absolutely makes skulks viable again mid to late game against shittier shotgunners and 2 2 marines with ok aim.
sometimes you gotta bite from every direction.
my favorite skulk moment recently was someone was building the cafeteria extractor from the top.
i come barreling in, from bar, top speed, bite him once in the face, once in the back, and finally once in the feet while he was falling off the extractor.
He literally didn't know what hit him.
it was adorable, he was just like... "wtf killed me?" in chat
you're going to have to give skulks more health too i think.
make it an actual slug fest maybe.
Skulks do start with 130 total health in my mod.
Nobody likes being forced to play as a fodder, especially when marines can kill a Skulk almost instantly late game. What feels worse is getting stomped without Leap. With some compensations to marines (such as more starting armor, or better Sentries), Leap could be made available on one Hive. I think a lot of edge cases in NS2 like this still need more attention to help reduce new player rage quitting.
It can be very refreshing to see 2 teams of full rookies go at it.
It is also fun to put a lower div team at them at times. (assuming for the moment that its a pcw scene and the rookie team knows whats it getting into)
Rookies can come up with complete crazy stuff which makes no sense. And lower div teams can be baffled long enough at times with 'what the hell is going on' to even have it work.
would it be possible
hear me out now,
to do something like,
every 500 hive points you have drops your damage output by 15 percent?
so at 1000 hive point you're doing 70 percent damage
at 2000 points you're doing 50 percent damage
at 3000 points you're doing 30 percent damage?
i would play the shit out of that mod. you gotta work at it to bring down your enemy, tweak the ratio as necessary.
god, that'd be fun.
can we get someone to implement this? please please pretty please with a cherry on top?
This was already attempted - or rather you could turn down your own damage manually. And it blows.
Good players will still rek rookie skulks even down to 30% dmg. But once lerks comes out - you can have a very mediocre lerk spike you to death - even though you're hitting most of your shots lerk spike just out dps's you. That's just the lerks, forget about trying to frag the fades..
It's just not a fun or interesting experience imo - and it's not good training either. You develop bad habits with these types of handicaps.
In my opinion, it didn't solve the problem that it seeked out to, instead it just adds new frustrations from my point of view.