you will realize that NS2 is basically stuck in the situation mentioned at 2:30 (with view on public games)
But don't ask me how to solve this situation we are in basically for 2 years now
If you try to solve the issue by introducing something new to game mechanic or changing old stuff then... good luck! I doubt it is possible.
Why don't you try looking at the simpler solutions: no matter how bad/good the Hive skill system works it is good enough to separate the best players from the worst and this is the only thing that matters in this case. 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). Standard server would have to declare a tag of LOW-MED only or MED-HIGH only. Medium range players (great majority of playerbase) can join every server and choose depending if they are in mood for more competitive game or to play more casually and give few lessons to weaker players without stomping them so painfully (as it is inevitable for highest-skilled players joining the very same servers). Of course, due to the solutions coming too late and the playerbase being already so low it'll be very difficult to introduce this kind of system, but around another free-week(end) or sale...
From a perspective of an average FPS player it doesn't really matter if he is a cheater or a good player. I have played several rounds with this guy and remember loosing once (when he joined mid-late game). And, moreover, I saw at least one game that was already lost for one team but then the guy suddenly joins the server and losing team and it becomes very long and boring game (with losing team suddenly becoming the winning one)... because (on a 20+ slots server!) the one guy is just completely ruining experience for almost every player.
It's just another example (and motivation for CDT, i hope) that separation of best players and worst should be top priority now. It was the biggest fail when NS2 started and still (practically) nothing was done to solve it. You won't keep more players around until this issue exist.
At least some of us are very aware of the issue.
After watching this video
you will realize that NS2 is basically stuck in the situation mentioned at 2:30 (with view on public games)
But don't ask me how to solve this situation we are in basically for 2 years now
Well - in that video they say that the "noobtube", is the piece of content that combats that scenario.
NS2 has noobtubes. We just call them, grenade launchers, gorge and onos. Clearly these are not enough to combat it.
I don't think many people would advocate for buffing either of these things (perhaps except the gorge). I don't think it's plausible to add more of this kind of content. - so the last solution that remains, as far as I can tell, is separation between skill levels.
You have done a good job balancing this game, both in competitive ns2 and in pub ns2 imo. The only remaining problem as I see it, is the skill disparity among the players. Something that no piece of content or balance adjustments will ever fix.
I've also noticed when you get hammerd quite a bit and then i last second you get away and round a corner then suddenly you die i think it got something with how the damage lags. Explaining a bit better evryone have had that moment when you are so close to die but you succed in last second to get in to a gorge tunnel then you live for half a second and then you die. Can anyone relate? Or is it just me.
That is lag compensation at work, which all games in this genre have. You are still on screen for the one shooting you. Since some of the aliens can move incredibly fast, this tends to be a more obvious in NS2 and also a bigger issue when the latency is higher
NS2 has noobtubes. We just call them, grenade launchers, gorge and onos.
I wouldn't call any of those noobtubes. A gorge doesn't really do much for new players to feel good about themselves, it's a support class. An onos is too late game as are grenade launchers. Noobtubes should be available from the beginning of a game to maximize their effectiveness on persuading new players to get into the game and continue playing.
GhoulofGSG9Join Date: 2013-03-31Member: 184566Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter, Pistachionauts
I just wanted to say that the noobtube is just a minor issue and topic the video is addressing.
NS2 has imho even more issues with the video's core topic: the power/skill relation of many game elements.
Many things in NS2 become with a certain amount of skill extremely powerful. So powerful you can control a complete round if your enemies are not skilled enough.
Alone the fact that people call out to split up the player base into certain groups should ring alarm bells in any game designers head.
(Yes it's okay to separate new players and the best but most ppl talk about splitting up the majority of the community)
Also NS2 has imho a set of fuu strategies and instead of breaking them up so the players would move on NS2 started to balance around them.
Furthermore if you have a look at the last balance changes NS2 received you will notice that those are almost all objective focused.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Well if the playerbase is large enough a split up in skill levels isn't all that bad, heck it's even a good thing. Take Starcraft 2 for example with their precious metals and minerals divisions. But in NS2 this simply won't work with the tiny playerbase so we have to try and find another way to fix the skill gap and don't look at me, I got nothing. I mean we want the high skill ceiling, but with that comes the fact that a single player can dominate a grunt server
The thing is, we also do not want (the community will kills us for it if we do), we do not want lowskill based kill mechanism. which are kinda inaffective but add that randomness to the game to allow lower skilled players to win from time to time over a skillful player.
Mainly because we have resources invested into higher lifeforms/weapons. Adding that random element will negate the winning team their earned advantage... The Team based resource system and team based steamroll which eventually will come if one team is on top... They do not allow for this random "noobtube" element...
CS Splits players up into skill groups, its not an inherently flawed game design decision. That video IMHO has 0 relation to NS2, its just way to different of a game to be applied to. There are significant problems with how new players experience NS2, but the lack of a weapon which can kill anything is not one of them.
Some basic separation of skill levels would be good for NS2, but obviously it requires the player base for it to work. In games that require more than 1 dimension of skill ( IE Aim + movement) you generally need to separate skill levels. For games with only a single one, the progression is more static and less likely to lead to outright stomping, so its not as critical.
This will sound arrogant, but I believe its true - NS2 has suffered greatly from balance changes by people who really shouldn't have been making them. That said, NS2 also suffers from unresolved design issues, complicating the balance changes needed. To truly 'fix' the game, someone first needs to decide what the intended goal is.
Alone the fact that people call out to split up the player base into certain groups should ring alarm bells in any game designers head.
(Yes it's okay to separate new players and the best but most ppl talk about splitting up the majority of the community)
No. In my example the great majority of players can play on every server. The only result is separating very-best players (that can ALONE ruin experience for 20 people) from weakest and giving a choice for everyone else. An average player could, as well, play few warm-up rounds on LOW-MID server and then move to MID-HIGH.
Let's be honest: I doubt it is currently possible to implement ANY solution that would really help this game to not being dead in few months (100+ hardocore NS2 players only). Imho, it's just already too late because most of people that would be interested in this kind of game already tasted it and got this shitty experience of being stomped by one (lucky scenario) or few high-skilled stackers. This game will be left for the hardcore players anyway and trying to implement even something a bit risky can only make a big profit or (in longer perspective) change nothing.
Is there not a MIN and MAX hive skill criteria that servers can put in place? I know there is a minimum hive time criteria some servers use, could this not be adapted for hive skill, we all know hive skill is not perfect but having a server that could cap players over a certain amount of hive skill may help?
8.0 KDR with over 30+ hours played... no that cant be right? maybe 5-10 hours till it evens out, but to keep such a high KDR, i just dont see how anyone could, apart from complete Rookie Farming on servers with less than 1000+ max skilled players, i just dont see how, My own KDR is around 3.0 and thats quite high even for me, so i just dont see how anyone can get such a high KDR, on a game like NS2.
If it is the same guy, he is such a bad player in terms of Game Sense, as a barn door would do better at lane blocking.
8.0 KDR with over 30+ hours played... no that cant be right? maybe 5-10 hours till it evens out, but to keep such a high KDR, i just dont see how anyone could, apart from complete Rookie Farming on servers with less than 1000+ max skilled players, i just dont see how, My own KDR is around 3.0 and thats quite high even for me, so i just dont see how anyone can get such a high KDR, on a game like NS2.
If it is the same guy, he is such a bad player in terms of Game Sense, as a barn door would do better at lane blocking.
8.0 KDR with over 30+ hours played... no that cant be right? maybe 5-10 hours till it evens out, but to keep such a high KDR, i just dont see how anyone could, apart from complete Rookie Farming on servers with less than 1000+ max skilled players, i just dont see how, My own KDR is around 3.0 and thats quite high even for me, so i just dont see how anyone can get such a high KDR, on a game like NS2.
If it is the same guy, he is such a bad player in terms of Game Sense, as a barn door would do better at lane blocking.
Its actually over 300+ hours and as far as I am aware this guy does not play competitively, there is probably a reason for that, probably because NSL admins and players will catch on quickly lol!
Its actually over 300+ hours and as far as I am aware this guy does not play competitively, their is probably a reason for that lol!
No player above him on Hive dashboard (in term of skill points) has a K/D ratio greater than 3.5... It's less than 45% compared to him. Y'all rookies!!!
I would love to see a mod that is creating stats (is the mouse really moving?) and screenshot on client machine ready to be uploaded on demand. Fluorescent skulks festival (contest) ? anyone ? I mean a lot of controls like GPU drivers functions on/off... etc...
In this case we're a few hundreds left so we have a clearer picture. With thousands... I'm not sure we could have seen this.
We would have spotted that long ago if some stats like aim were included in hive... I mean this private Steam profile is clearly farming and / or doing something nasty (not to use the C word).
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
If someone would use a hack, we can assume he would have a hack smart enough not to send correct data with its 'anti cheat' mod, surely @UncleCrunch.
Therein lies the problem. The client can not be trusted so any information supplied by the client can be faked.
And no, I do not have a good idea how to do anything without false positives on server side.
@DC_Darkling I don't follow that reasoning.. What reason do you have for that assumption?
I have very underwhelming programming knowledge, but I'm assuming when it comes to cheating in games, ns2 is one of the easier ones to make hacks for. There isn't a lot of anti-cheat.
Given that, I think it's very likely that hackers in ns2 could either be lazy or incompetent enough to not account for every conceivable counter-measure.
As @SantaClaws said usually they go simple until an obstacle is put on the road. Yes if an evolution is necessary someone motivated enough will find a way to bypass the obstacle. But it will be less and less people at each iteration. And it will take more time and skills to bypass... less time for playing.
Then; about the data that is sent to any checking asset you can imagine , it's less and less fake-able if you have many samples. Ex: correlate mouse movement and the position/angle of player. How many keys were pressed against number of action (pistol script), and so on. Check if a .exe is interacting with the game exe.
The main problem is to upload this data at the same time; without disturbing the packet flow. A matter of encoding and network. Not really the biggest challenge for an ok programmer.
There aren't enough players to split people up into categories. You are always going to have a big skill range in the game.
If that's a problem you can change the curve a little bit on accuracy to bridge the gap. Right now damage scales perfectly with accuracy. If you land twice as many shots you do twice as much damage. The solution already exists in the lerk bite and the flamethrower.
If all attacks caused "bleed damage" that was a short damage over time you can bridge the gap. The key to this is to only allow one stack of bleed damage from one player to another. If you land an additional hit before the the first lot of bleed damage completes then you lose the remaining ticks, they don't bleed twice as much. In the same way that lighting up an already burning alien doesn't cause them to burn twice as much afterwards.
Therefore its still more effective to land more hits, however a pro player doesn't get much benefit because they keep cancelling their own stacks of damage by landing hits so well.
It might also mask the cause of a common problem, which is the crazy hit latency causing you to lose your life form when you are already round the corner on your screen, as it will have an actual legitimate in game reason to happen, rather than being perceived as a failing of the game.
edit: put in a spoiler tag because its not completely relevant to the discussion
I doubt anyone would waste their time cheating in NS2 now. During its prime only encountered 2 cheaters and both were banned from all official servers the same day or a day later - It's hard to cheat in NS2 and not be obvious just because of how the game is. Similar to cheating in quake, you'd look like an idiot with aimbot on a projectile weapon.
Have any video proof? I'll take a look at it. In the meantime you can report/submit any evidence to the server owner and they can ban the player from the server. Unlike other games it's much easier to get a player banned from a server on NS2 since the game runs fully on player owned dedicated servers.
I doubt anyone would waste their time cheating in NS2 now. During its prime only encountered 2 cheaters and both were banned from all official servers the same day or a day later - It's hard to cheat in NS2 and not be obvious just because of how the game is. Similar to cheating in quake, you'd look like an idiot with aimbot on a projectile weapon.
Have any video proof? I'll take a look at it. In the meantime you can report/submit any evidence to the server owner and they can ban the player from the server. Unlike other games it's much easier to get a player banned from a server on NS2 since the game runs fully on player owned dedicated servers.
The "obvious" argument is weak. Just last month I heard about two players being caught and they went unnoticed for a long time. They were just above average. What if you only use the aim to kill high life forms?...
I doubt anyone would waste their time cheating in NS2 now. During its prime only encountered 2 cheaters and both were banned from all official servers the same day or a day later - It's hard to cheat in NS2 and not be obvious just because of how the game is. Similar to cheating in quake, you'd look like an idiot with aimbot on a projectile weapon.
Have any video proof? I'll take a look at it. In the meantime you can report/submit any evidence to the server owner and they can ban the player from the server. Unlike other games it's much easier to get a player banned from a server on NS2 since the game runs fully on player owned dedicated servers.
The "obvious" argument is weak. Just last month I heard about two players being caught and they went unnoticed for a long time. They were just above average. What if you only use the aim to kill high life forms?...
Iirc, that is exactly what evilbot did. He sucked against skulks, would lose 1v1 fights - but win insane 2v1 fights against lerks with lmg.
Anybody can explain me why this guy is casting official ensl match with aimbot on? http://www.twitch.tv/lambbbu/profile
He's been casting his hacks for a few days now... so is it some kind of new idea of encouraging new players to NS2?
Lamb is playing on one of the top teams in ns2 and has been forever basically.
Tiny semantic; when you say casting, you mean broadcasting, not shoutcasting right?
Anyways, you're going to have to be much more specific if you want to be taken seriously with hackusations of this nature. Point to a recording (they're all on his twitch page), point to a time.
Anybody can explain me why this guy is casting official ensl match with aimbot on? http://www.twitch.tv/lambbbu/profile
He's been casting his hacks for a few days now... so is it some kind of new idea of encouraging new players to NS2?
Anybody can explain me why this guy is casting official ensl match with aimbot on? http://www.twitch.tv/lambbbu/profile
He's been casting his hacks for a few days now... so is it some kind of new idea of encouraging new players to NS2?
So basically, you find a high end competitive player and accuse them of hacking because they are better than you?
First - it'd be nice if you didn't delete the yesterday's video from twitch. Then, yes, your mouse movement is very unnatural (like 1:55 in the CheatsLive). But, tbh I don't really care if you cheat or not. You are completely unplayable for me. You are just another example why this game needs so much the separation of best and worst players. The playerbase was slaughtered by guys like you joining and ruining game for 20 or more casual players.
But to a more serious note, Guys that play Comp dont ruin the game / empty servers, infact they are a core part of NS2, Off course you will come accross some that are just complete dicks / toxic, they are the ones that ruin /empty servers...but that goes 2 ways as there is some REALLY bad players that do the same.
You are wrong. It may look like this if your viewpoint is the viewpoint of a good player. From a perspective of a casual player it doesn't matter if a player like Lamb is a toxic player or his charming personality is filling the server. As long as he is not playing as commander he will ruin experience on a server filled with casual players.
You are wrong. It may look like this if your viewpoint is the viewpoint of a good player. From a perspective of a casual player it doesn't matter if a player like Lamb is a toxic player or his charming personality is filling the server. As long as he is not playing as commander he will ruin experience on a server filled with casual players.
My View point is from Experience, and if there is no other servers with slots to play on, then they can / should play where they can, off course if its just a stompfest, then they should consider leaving / commanding. But even then commanding can be even more toxic.
Comments
Why don't you try looking at the simpler solutions: no matter how bad/good the Hive skill system works it is good enough to separate the best players from the worst and this is the only thing that matters in this case. 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). Standard server would have to declare a tag of LOW-MED only or MED-HIGH only. Medium range players (great majority of playerbase) can join every server and choose depending if they are in mood for more competitive game or to play more casually and give few lessons to weaker players without stomping them so painfully (as it is inevitable for highest-skilled players joining the very same servers). Of course, due to the solutions coming too late and the playerbase being already so low it'll be very difficult to introduce this kind of system, but around another free-week(end) or sale...
Well - in that video they say that the "noobtube", is the piece of content that combats that scenario.
NS2 has noobtubes. We just call them, grenade launchers, gorge and onos. Clearly these are not enough to combat it.
I don't think many people would advocate for buffing either of these things (perhaps except the gorge). I don't think it's plausible to add more of this kind of content. - so the last solution that remains, as far as I can tell, is separation between skill levels.
You have done a good job balancing this game, both in competitive ns2 and in pub ns2 imo. The only remaining problem as I see it, is the skill disparity among the players. Something that no piece of content or balance adjustments will ever fix.
That is lag compensation at work, which all games in this genre have. You are still on screen for the one shooting you. Since some of the aliens can move incredibly fast, this tends to be a more obvious in NS2 and also a bigger issue when the latency is higher
I wouldn't call any of those noobtubes. A gorge doesn't really do much for new players to feel good about themselves, it's a support class. An onos is too late game as are grenade launchers. Noobtubes should be available from the beginning of a game to maximize their effectiveness on persuading new players to get into the game and continue playing.
NS2 has imho even more issues with the video's core topic: the power/skill relation of many game elements.
Many things in NS2 become with a certain amount of skill extremely powerful. So powerful you can control a complete round if your enemies are not skilled enough.
Alone the fact that people call out to split up the player base into certain groups should ring alarm bells in any game designers head.
(Yes it's okay to separate new players and the best but most ppl talk about splitting up the majority of the community)
Also NS2 has imho a set of fuu strategies and instead of breaking them up so the players would move on NS2 started to balance around them.
Furthermore if you have a look at the last balance changes NS2 received you will notice that those are almost all objective focused.
The thing is, we also do not want (the community will kills us for it if we do), we do not want lowskill based kill mechanism. which are kinda inaffective but add that randomness to the game to allow lower skilled players to win from time to time over a skillful player.
Mainly because we have resources invested into higher lifeforms/weapons. Adding that random element will negate the winning team their earned advantage... The Team based resource system and team based steamroll which eventually will come if one team is on top... They do not allow for this random "noobtube" element...
Some basic separation of skill levels would be good for NS2, but obviously it requires the player base for it to work. In games that require more than 1 dimension of skill ( IE Aim + movement) you generally need to separate skill levels. For games with only a single one, the progression is more static and less likely to lead to outright stomping, so its not as critical.
This will sound arrogant, but I believe its true - NS2 has suffered greatly from balance changes by people who really shouldn't have been making them. That said, NS2 also suffers from unresolved design issues, complicating the balance changes needed. To truly 'fix' the game, someone first needs to decide what the intended goal is.
Let's be honest: I doubt it is currently possible to implement ANY solution that would really help this game to not being dead in few months (100+ hardocore NS2 players only). Imho, it's just already too late because most of people that would be interested in this kind of game already tasted it and got this shitty experience of being stomped by one (lucky scenario) or few high-skilled stackers. This game will be left for the hardcore players anyway and trying to implement even something a bit risky can only make a big profit or (in longer perspective) change nothing.
If it is the same guy, he is such a bad player in terms of Game Sense, as a barn door would do better at lane blocking.
I'll PM you mate
Its actually over 300+ hours and as far as I am aware this guy does not play competitively, there is probably a reason for that, probably because NSL admins and players will catch on quickly lol!
I would love to see a mod that is creating stats (is the mouse really moving?) and screenshot on client machine ready to be uploaded on demand. Fluorescent skulks festival (contest) ? anyone ? I mean a lot of controls like GPU drivers functions on/off... etc...
In this case we're a few hundreds left so we have a clearer picture. With thousands... I'm not sure we could have seen this.
We would have spotted that long ago if some stats like aim were included in hive... I mean this private Steam profile is clearly farming and / or doing something nasty (not to use the C word).
Therein lies the problem. The client can not be trusted so any information supplied by the client can be faked.
And no, I do not have a good idea how to do anything without false positives on server side.
I have very underwhelming programming knowledge, but I'm assuming when it comes to cheating in games, ns2 is one of the easier ones to make hacks for. There isn't a lot of anti-cheat.
Given that, I think it's very likely that hackers in ns2 could either be lazy or incompetent enough to not account for every conceivable counter-measure.
Then; about the data that is sent to any checking asset you can imagine , it's less and less fake-able if you have many samples. Ex: correlate mouse movement and the position/angle of player. How many keys were pressed against number of action (pistol script), and so on. Check if a .exe is interacting with the game exe.
The main problem is to upload this data at the same time; without disturbing the packet flow. A matter of encoding and network. Not really the biggest challenge for an ok programmer.
If that's a problem you can change the curve a little bit on accuracy to bridge the gap. Right now damage scales perfectly with accuracy. If you land twice as many shots you do twice as much damage. The solution already exists in the lerk bite and the flamethrower.
If all attacks caused "bleed damage" that was a short damage over time you can bridge the gap. The key to this is to only allow one stack of bleed damage from one player to another. If you land an additional hit before the the first lot of bleed damage completes then you lose the remaining ticks, they don't bleed twice as much. In the same way that lighting up an already burning alien doesn't cause them to burn twice as much afterwards.
Therefore its still more effective to land more hits, however a pro player doesn't get much benefit because they keep cancelling their own stacks of damage by landing hits so well.
It might also mask the cause of a common problem, which is the crazy hit latency causing you to lose your life form when you are already round the corner on your screen, as it will have an actual legitimate in game reason to happen, rather than being perceived as a failing of the game.
edit: put in a spoiler tag because its not completely relevant to the discussion
Have any video proof? I'll take a look at it. In the meantime you can report/submit any evidence to the server owner and they can ban the player from the server. Unlike other games it's much easier to get a player banned from a server on NS2 since the game runs fully on player owned dedicated servers.
The "obvious" argument is weak. Just last month I heard about two players being caught and they went unnoticed for a long time. They were just above average. What if you only use the aim to kill high life forms?...
What about sXe and the likes? Could it be used?
http://www.twitch.tv/lambbbu/profile
He's been casting his hacks for a few days now... so is it some kind of new idea of encouraging new players to NS2?
Lamb is playing on one of the top teams in ns2 and has been forever basically.
Tiny semantic; when you say casting, you mean broadcasting, not shoutcasting right?
Anyways, you're going to have to be much more specific if you want to be taken seriously with hackusations of this nature. Point to a recording (they're all on his twitch page), point to a time.
Hope to see you in pubs tomorrow.
So basically, you find a high end competitive player and accuse them of hacking because they are better than you?
Nice...
But to a more serious note, Guys that play Comp dont ruin the game / empty servers, infact they are a core part of NS2, Off course you will come accross some that are just complete dicks / toxic, they are the ones that ruin /empty servers...but that goes 2 ways as there is some REALLY bad players that do the same.
My View point is from Experience, and if there is no other servers with slots to play on, then they can / should play where they can, off course if its just a stompfest, then they should consider leaving / commanding. But even then commanding can be even more toxic.