B. My favorite server I've ever played on was built around ez shuffle vote and conceding quickly and not extending gameplay past it's realistic limits (Tactical Freedom, RIP)
Well, if you want to stop conceding so much and slowing gameplay, get on board with changing the cysting system away from building requirements. I don't think it's intuitively clear what effects that would have to most players.
But "most players" do absolutely nothing instead of welding eachother during lulls in combat. People with thousands of hours don't weld instinctively.
To be honest the lack of a minimap on aliens would be far less troublesome if we had REAL hivesight. Remember ns1 my fellow oldbies?
Where aliens saw any attacking blip in their real world? Where you always saw the hives as a blip in your world? I think you even saw teammates, but do not quite me on that.
You would also get the structure under attack warning.
For the folk who did not play ns1 and do not know what I mean. Imagine summit. You are in crossroads. If you look to atrium, you see a atrium blip (or I guess in ns2 icon) of a hive, if you have a hive. If its being attacked it pulsing red.
That RT in crevice? If its being hit you see a pulsing red blip where your RT is, all while standing in crossraids.
So you do not need a minimap. You see the various blips on your screen and you react. It was different from marines yes, but not at all inferior.
NS2 does not have this, so the lack of a minimap always seems odd in comparison.
I have brought this up in the CDT on numerous occasions however we were unable to do anything about it, I do hope this idea is given some serious consideration by the new dev team. @WasabiOne
Will there ever be a way to vote to load up a different type of game mode on map change?
That would simplify the needs of having to run a server for a game mode, and may help keep players engaged for longer.
Think like - play several games of NS2 vanilla, then play a round of MvM, SwS or Siege before jumping back into standard NS2.
One of the things that kept me playing NS1 back in the day was being able to change between NS, CO, or Siege at every map change. This kept me actively playing on the server and meeting new people.
Will there ever be a way to vote to load up a different type of game mode on map change?
That would simplify the needs of having to run a server for a game mode, and may help keep players engaged for longer.
Think like - play several games of NS2 vanilla, then play a round of MvM, SwS or Siege before jumping back into standard NS2.
One of the things that kept me playing NS1 back in the day was being able to change between NS, CO, or Siege at every map change. This kept me actively playing on the server and meeting new people.
I believe it is possible now. Mods can be loaded only by which map is in use. So you could vote in ns2_seige or whatever and have the seige mod loaded in too.
NS2 lerk spores are fine, in my opinion. It makes more sense for the defensive ability to be ranged and the offensive ability to require some additional risk on the lerk's part. I've always found NS2's iteration of spores to be more effective at finishing off marines as they retreat (dust the retreat path in advance; it's very effective during virtually any chokepoint assault) or as a form of crowd control / advancement dissuasion. Losing that mechanic would be unfortunate.
I also don't see the need to nerf the lerk's movement. If you're an isolated marine in a large room, don't be. Hovering chippers can easily be repelled with lmg fire at almost any distance, anyway. Anything else requires a large degree of skill on the lerk's part, and NS2 should reward good play. The fact that the lerk can be dropped so suddenly when caught unawares is an adequate balance check.
NS2 lerk spores are fine, in my opinion. It makes more sense for the defensive ability to be ranged and the offensive ability to require some additional risk on the lerk's part. I've always found NS2's iteration of spores to be more effective at finishing off marines as they retreat (dust the retreat path in advance; it's very effective during virtually any chokepoint assault) or as a form of crowd control / advancement dissuasion. Losing that mechanic would be unfortunate.
That mechanic would still be there, it'd just be a whole heap easier and more powerful. I'm neither for nor against projectile spores, but if they become a thing, they need to be hive3+.
NS2 lerk spores are fine, in my opinion. It makes more sense for the defensive ability to be ranged and the offensive ability to require some additional risk on the lerk's part. I've always found NS2's iteration of spores to be more effective at finishing off marines as they retreat (dust the retreat path in advance; it's very effective during virtually any chokepoint assault) or as a form of crowd control / advancement dissuasion. Losing that mechanic would be unfortunate.
That mechanic would still be there, it'd just be a whole heap easier and more powerful. I'm neither for nor against projectile spores, but if they become a thing, they need to be hive3+.
The mechanic wouldn't be there to the same degree insofar as cropdusting is most effective in linear chokepoints (e.g., back alley), and sporing from any fixed position wouldn't cover nearly as much area (even if it's easier and more powerful against marine frontlines). Under the status quo, sporing the backlines as your teammates assault the frontlines is an efficacy multiplier because some marines will naturally retreat as they reload, and fully repelled assaults will retreat to the nearest structural reinforcements (phases, armories, etc.). What we have now is a much more interesting mechanic, even if it's more complex.
I'm still curious as to how infestation would spread without cysts,who/what would control where and when it spreads? Does it spread on it's own depending on the current situation? If so,I don't think I like that idea,I don't want to have to wait for the infestation to realize "Oh,I can spread here now!" after waiting for it to spread to a Tech-Point or something.....
Then again,I could be completely oblivious to what it would actually do,so if I am,could someone tell me what it would do without cysts? I sure am gonna miss the little blobs of orange if they go But I still think Cysts providing bio-luminescent light for the Kharaa would be awesome!
I've always found NS2's iteration of spores to be more effective at finishing off marines as they retreat (dust the retreat path in advance; it's very effective during virtually any chokepoint assault) or as a form of crowd control / advancement dissuasion. Losing that mechanic would be unfortunate.
I think this was the original intention. However, in practise, the reason why you have to retreat in the first place, more often than not, is because you're out of energy. That sort of defeats the purpose for the dust cropper spores, as that requires a ton of energy.
I also don't see the need to nerf the lerk's movement. If you're an isolated marine in a large room, don't be.
That's, what I've been saying all along - that's not the reason for the nerf though. The reason for the nerf, is that lerks too easily get away with poor decisions. They engage in a fight that they had no business in, and escape because of the erratic movements. It's too easy to play lerk this way imo. I want to up the skill ceiling in this regard. I want to make it imperative to make good decisions, rather than rely on a ridiculously easy to perform movement mechanic.
And let me just re-iterate, I main as lerk, and I'm not coming from this as someone butthurt cus he can't kill lerks - in fact I've invested countless hours to specialize against this lifeform and I feel like I do well. But it's not about me. It's about the vast majority of players who aren't willing to specialize against a single lifeform like that. And because I do see bad lerks get rewarded with bad decisions because they can't get hit by the average player as they exit.
To be fair, fades have a similar problem, but not to the same extend as lerk imo.
To make an analogy to overwatch. Tracer is a hero that similarly, can pick and choose her engagements because of her mobility. Moreover, she can run in and immediately realize "this was a mistake", and press a button to escape.
You can not do the same thing with, say a reaper. If you run in at the wrong time, they'll chase you down and kill you. These high mobility characters, like Tracer, often get revered as having "high skill ceilings", but I don't agree. Because they excuse bad decisions, by allowing you to pick bad engagements and still escape. It's far more difficult to play the character that allows for zero mistakes imo.
As case and point; In the first week of overwatch beta, there was a video with clockwork, counting something like 20 killstreak as tracer against the dev team. You think he gets away with that with any other class with next to no practise? No, it's because he's playing a forgiving character.
All you would need to do for aliens to end games faster once they get hive 3/xeno is just double the damage of xeno on structures. It might seem overkill but if the purpose is to end games, its fine. Doesn't affect how marines can counter-push a hive but ends the turtle sieges much faster.
That buy menu looks really interesting, tidy it up a bit and it looks way more informative @IeptBarakat
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited December 2015
Funny that Tracer was brought up. I had just envisioned a Spores tweaks which works like time bomb (Tracer's ultimate), which gives it a short range (about 5-10 units), and can be lobbed like ranged spores of NS, and travels slower than the Lerk (about marine speed). Spores would damage a hugh amount of damage (kills a marine in 3 seconds), making it very rewarding for sneak attacks, as well as area denial while retreating. Its energy cost and cooldown would be quite high though.
Lerk's ability to turn instantly while gliding definitely needs a rebalancing. For a class which travels so fast, so versatile and strikes so hard, Lerk is currently too good at dodging bullets, especially during early game. Shotgun is the counter to Lerk at close range, but Lerk spikes also happen to counter Shotgun. Something has to give, for skilled Lerks to be more balanced. Removing instant 180 degree turning seems like the obvious answer.
Someone had also brought up earlier (would anyone confirm or bust this myth?), that it is possible for clients to mispredict the position of Lerk because they do not have much predictable movement physics during glide. Deliberately causing hit detection errors would be the last thing this game needs.
I think this was the original intention. However, in practise, the reason why you have to retreat in the first place, more often than not, is because you're out of energy. That sort of defeats the purpose for the dust cropper spores, as that requires a ton of energy.
Well, here I'm referring to taking out marines as they retreat (by timing your spore attacks in conjunction with your team, clouded hallways can virtually assure that marines lose massive amounts of personal resources on failed attacks in at least a few lanes on every map). But spores also work wonderfully for preventing marine advancement as your team needs to retreat. Lerks are actually really well equipped here, since they can umbra the lifeforms that need it from range (like the onos that's trying to back out of a room), and they can introduce a disincentive for marine advancement in the form of spore walls (at some cost to themselves: a high energy cost and a risk of being shot). I'm a bit less concerned about your point re: being out of energy, since that's the kind of thing that can be tweaked into the sweet spot by adjusting energy costs for particular attacks. Energy management more generally is something that players should simply learn, as it's a core mechanic.
that's not the reason for the nerf though. The reason for the nerf, is that lerks too easily get away with poor decisions. They engage in a fight that they had no business in, and escape because of the erratic movements. It's too easy to play lerk this way imo. I want to up the skill ceiling in this regard. I want to make it imperative to make good decisions, rather than rely on a ridiculously easy to perform movement mechanic.
This hasn't been my experience, I guess. I find that bad lerks are a dime a dozen, and they pay for their poor movement skills more than almost any other lifeform does (I see walker fades escape bad situations in pubs far more often than I see crappy lerks make it out alive). I think the ceiling is about where it should be. People who can move as well as you describe aren't as common in the pub community as is suggested.
If someone doesn't want to "specialize against a single lifeform" they're playing the wrong game. Competent marines should be expected to learn the common movement patterns and escape lanes for all five lifeforms - the game is built around it. Neutering or dulling down the unique movement capacities of each lifeform is not the way to achieve proper balance in the metagame. And I'm not convinced that bad lerks are so commonly rewarded for casual play. If anything, the only lerks I see with amazing KDRs are those who do precisely what you want to encourage: make good decisions.
They engage in a fight that they had no business in, and escape because of the erratic movements. It's too easy to play lerk this way imo. I want to up the skill ceiling in this regard. I want to make it imperative to make good decisions, rather than rely on a ridiculously easy to perform movement mechanic.
That sounds extremely similar to the comments about shadowstep before it was replaced with blink. I don't mean that in a positive way.
Please don't get rid of cysts and powernodes for sake of simplicity, they make the game unique.
I am a new player that started less than 1 year ago.
Please leave cysts on, how can cysts be complicated. If you are a marine you shoot them. Same with power. It only gets more complicated if you are a commander, but if you are a commander you should know how this things work. I also love the alien cysting mecanics, I can do offensive cysts and drop a crag right before my team starts attacking a marine point.
In my opinion the game is quite balanced, it only gets unbalanced when 2 players kill an entire team.
One more time, Please don't remove cysts or powernodes.
What could be improved:
Increase medpack pickup radius, I don't like to play marine comm because between my bad internet connection and bad aim I miss 40% of my medpacks. Most times I miss them by milimeters, so yeah increasing pickup by a bit wouldn't hurt.
Maybe put some cooldown on repeated medpacks, this is because if you have a pr0 marine, he will just smash 5 skulks biting him because the comm his just spamming the med packs.
I am reading the doc and "Electrified extractors as a means of passive resource protection" really? How is a skulk going to be able to bite RTs to force the marines back ?
Removing upgrade chambers (those are the shells/ shades right?) Also doesn't make much sense. They add another game mechanic, I like to go into a undefended hive and just try to kill one of those.
My point is, I know that you are trying to make it easier for newbies, but with this changes it will become Counter Strike: alien infestation.
If you remove cysts, powernodes, upgrade chambers, add electrified extractors. The game will go like this, marines put up RT's, Alients put up RT's and it becomes another bland shooter game. You can't make a tactical invasion of hive with 2 or 3 marines and kill upgrades because to do it you have to kill the whole hive. You can't do power rush because there's no power nodes so you have to destroy base.
How will this benefit NS2?
Also some games are very one sided because I find a lot of people start losing after two minutes and want to reset the game. I am new to comm but I never surrender. Yesterday my team won a game because they rushed our hive with 8 exos and we killed their only comm station. Before this everyone wanted to surrender and game was very one sided but I tried to keep them going, as a comm your job is to keep the morale up before anything else.
Might sound a bit harsh but I am appreciate the work they are putting into one of the only two games I play and am looking forward for updates, I am just giving my feedback as a non-veteran player.
If there's one thing I've learned it's that Dunkin' Donuts isn't popular because it's good. It's popular because it's always the same everywhere and people are terrified of change, for better or worse.
All these complaints seems to be originated from the same frustration.
You loose big when you fail. Sg versus lerk. One loose the shotgun against a flying chicken (and the hitreg issue) and usually have to buy it again. The other one loose a lifeform against the same issue.
I'm still voting for class respawn. Many systems can be implemented . See suggestion new site later.
Also some games are very one sided because I find a lot of people start losing after two minutes and want to reset the game. I am new to comm but I never surrender. Yesterday my team won a game because they rushed our hive with 8 exos and we killed their only comm station. Before this everyone wanted to surrender and game was very one sided but I tried to keep them going, as a comm your job is to keep the morale up before anything else.
Yeah, 2 minutes are too early to assess (especialy for marines, which can respawn fast and retake the map - especialy on servers that increase starting IP count).
Though if the teams are extremely stacked, there should be reset and then FET. I WISH THERE WAS A VOTE FOR THAT OR NO FORCED DELAY BETWEEN THOSE TWO VOTES. I experience this comedy every fourth game or so on rookie servers:
1) FET vote fails
2) veterans by some quantum tunneling or dunno how end up in one team and the innocent newbies in the other
3) some newbie innocently starts the game
4) even more veterans (who know proper team making and sportsmanship) F4 in hope of quickly forcing new game and team creation
5) the error is realized and reset is voted
6) some newbie will get restless during the mandatory wait between votes (for FET) or manual player shifting and starts the game again.
7) nobody feels like voting reset again
8) newbies get whipped hard in humiliating fashion
9) third of the newbies never play this game again
10) there are some lessons learnt and FET/Shuffle is voted and next few games are good.
But on most situations I observe the opposite. People do not concede frequently enough (I play in EU - maybe it's some cultural thing ). I get the last stands are appealing to new players and from time to time, but it gets old. Sometimes the game can be saved by influx of new players in the team (if you started on empty server). But if you have 1 techpoint, less than 1 RT, are already behind in res and tech for several minutes and no commander and no plan, it is a lose 100 to 1 (and I do not feel like suffering through those 99 for that 1).
If there's one thing I've learned it's that Dunkin' Donuts isn't popular because it's good. It's popular because it's always the same everywhere and people are terrified of change, for better or worse.
But what do you mean by that?
You think they should turn NS2 into another counterstrike?
Some things need to change, like the game pacing. I love playing gorge but as soon as I build a defensive position, either I make it too good and we just instantly take control of the map further ahead. Or i don't even have time to get 3 hydras up because marines are already rushing in with grenade launchers.
Don't know how to address this, maybe diminishing returns on RTs, or make the RTs give resources slower.
Cysts and power nodes make the game fun, but I would liek to see how it would be that rooms without power node had really low light. The only light being from the cysts like on some screenshots that popped up earlier.
But i'm kinda new. I only play gorge, welder marine/FT or comm because i can't hit for shit when the skulks are going aerial acrobatics, also I like to play support. I stopped buying shotguns altogether, for me those resources are much better spent on pulse grenades or mines.
To lower the speed of the game and the famous snowball i guess 'upkeep' for RT-count over 3 (or 2 4 5 w/e) might work.
So 4th rt gets -1 penalty on whatever it gives, 5th gets -2 etc until the last rts are just for having a nice 'buffer'.
Mustve been suggested before, surely. Dont know what the negatives where.
@Gitro Alot of the things you said in your original suggestion post........you mentioned the two main things that I HATE in NS2. The main one being winning to fast and not being able to do what you wanted in time. (I can not stress how much this has happened to me,it happened to me last night!)and the second being those stupid.....cocky.....500 somethin badges....2000 hour pro marines that just jump around with a SG and constantly.....constantly getting spammed with Meds and Ammo.......I've said it once and I'll say it aga-I HATE IT......sorry I needed to let that out. (and yes I exaggerated the marine's skill )
I agree cysts shouldn't be removed entirely.(it would make alot of the loading screens look like "what are those?" to new players) I actually made a suggestion once saying that both teams should use light as a mechanic where marines have...well....lights,and aliens used cysts to create Bio-Luminescence,and instead of emergency lights coming on after the power went out,they stayed off. This would make fighting without power REALLY fun! (and scary!) I mean imagine walking into an almost pitch-black room that has an orange glow all over it,and what's that you see on the wall? You turn on your flash light(WHY WASN'T IT ON BEFORE?!)and what do you see? ALIENS! Oh gosh that would give me chills so bad! Of course to the Kharaa darkness wouldn't be a problem for them as Alien Vision would need to be improved. Plus I imagine them seeing more Bio-Luminescence than Humans. (Better eyesight....ya know?) And maybe Marines could get better flashlights and ARCs getting headlights?
Basically,it would allow cysts and infestation to co-exist without the use of cyst chains n' such,while adding a whole new mechanic that doesn't involve actual fighting,but how the environment looks depending on the current power......if there is any (If you see any problems with my suggestion,let me know so I can improve!)
I see that better tutorials are in the works, that's a great thing. This game, and any other complex game with a high learning or skill curve, will turn off a lot of casual gamers that don't want to spend all their gaming time getting ripped up in multiplayer because they don't understand or haven't gotten competent with the mechanics.
There are two big areas I feel need improvement.
First, along with in-depth tutorials, I think new players would benefit from some meaningful training area. Currently, we have a choice of open sandbox, which is good for what it is, or we have play against bots, which is apparently code for "aliens win in 30 seconds because marines bots really are quite terrible". Couple better bot training with in-depth tutorials covering all structures, game mechanics, equipment, and life forms, and new players won't have the frustration of trying to get familiar with everything and get competent while getting slaughtered.
Second, I think upgrades and new life forms and abilities should permanently unlock. The fact that whatever you just spent your resources on is gone if you die means only those that have mastered the game get to spend any meaningful amount of time using the different equipment or playing as anything other than a skulk. I myself, not having mastered anything to any great extent, find myself sitting on my resources, playing as a skulk or with the lmg, simply because I know I will die in a minute or two and those resources will be gone forever.
Maybe changing the rate at which players gain personal resources so mistakes are less a permanent punishment would be a good idea?
Also, I think for a reboot to work, you need to pretty much re-release on Steam. Maybe make it Natural Selection 2.1, NS2:Evolved, something to differentiate it so that players that were previously interested and had quickly been frustrated into quitting would be enticed to try the "new improved version".
I am a newcomer with about 100 hours played. I remember many things that confused or annoyed me. I wanted to quit the game many times. I persisted and now I'm enjoying the game very much. You're right that in order to retain rookies, you really need to improve the newcomer experience.
First things first:
If you want to improve rookie experience, you need to ask rookies. You won't find them here. You need to reach out to them on the game main screen, or on map loading screen, or on death screen/pre-game mode screen.
You should use a proper tool for this discussion. It's much better to have a threaded discussion than a huge unthreaded flow like this (under a blogpost or in a forum). It's hard to watch out for replies, it's hard to add something, it just gets lost. I see some people link to userreports.com, yet I see no official links to it from anywhere (game main webpage, etc). People will not find it. Use good tools and make them discoverable. Don't require registration, that's puts off most. Allow external logins or just email-based (userreports.com seems to do this). Or use Steam forums for gathering feedback, that's available right away to everyone.
Now for improved rookie experience (from what I remember, in no particular order):
Add in-game encyclopedia listing all units, structures and abilities with simple description, recommendations, and perhaps even videos. Make it easily available from the game (from the evolve menu, allow to show encyclopedia entry for each lifeform).
Make it more obvious when game is not started and we're waiting for a commander. I can't count how many times I thought we're actually playing. Remove glitches like missing crosshair during pre-game, that only adds to confusion.
Make NS2+ mod the default. It improves the game so much I consider vanilla NS2 unplayable. It also adds to confusion of rookies, because if they by chance connect to vanilla NS2 server, some things work differently (for example C key is not a toggle, you need to hold it) and they have no idea why.
Consolidate the voting menus. I know of 3 different voting menus in the game - X button, M button and Esc->Vote button. That's insane, and it's one of the reasons why rookies never know how to eject commander or vote concede. (On top of that, X collides with last-game stats, so it depends if you quickly press it or hold it - this is madness).
Remove "concede not allowed" timer.
Make it easier for teams to concede or eject commander. It's very hard to do that now, mostly because people don't know how to do it. They react much better to F1/F2 voting, because that is obvious! So maybe change concede/eject into F1/F2 vote.
Make it more obvious who's currently talking. From UI standpoint, move the indicators from right screen edge to left screen edge, because everything is at the left screen edge. With larger screen, the right edge is out of your focus area and it's very hard to notice the speakers name. Make the name disappear gradually, so it's possible to still read it even if they bark a single command (otherwise the indicator is instantly gone, and you have no idea who was just talking). From in-game standpoint, if I see the person, it should be *very* obvious he's talking - add a big icon, or even better highlight him and his name. You can even consider highlighting the person through walls, even if I don't directly see him.
Make the near-world chat (added recently) more used. I haven't seen anyone use it yet, most people probably don't even know. Teach them, and add a default keybinding. This is much more useful when shouting something like "behind you!". When I'm using near-world chat, highlight the names of other players around me, so that I can easily address the right person.
Add more skill-limited servers. I know only of one (<1000 skill), and it's not always running. This helps *a lot* and I really enjoy playing there. No more freaking 2500-skill sharpshooter gods.
Make extremely good players handicapped in some way. If somebody has 10:1 K:D ratio or more, clearly the game is not balanced, and I can guarantee you the rookies are not enjoying it. This can be solved with skill-limited servers, but maybe you can even put a bounty on such a player - the enemy team getting extra RTs for killing such a player. Highlighting him in red in alien vision, so that rookies don't attack him one by one. Or something similar. I admit, this is controversial, but extremely skilled players were my #1 cause of rage-quitting this game. I was convinced they are cheaters with aimbots. Now that I have more experience, I tend to believe they are simply so good. But don't underestimate the emotions the rookies get from this.
It would be very helpful for rookies to see why exactly they died, because often they die and don't even know how. After death, replay the last 10 seconds in slow motion, in third person view or the killer view, and show them exactly what went wrong. This will help with cheater accusations greatly. How was it possible that he saw them when they though they were hidden? How come they got shot when it seemed he was looking the other way? Show people how they died.
Even better, it would be great to automatically save replay from any of the past few games, and be able to replay them and switch between views of any of the players.
Gorge build menu needs to be separated from the attacking skills, because people very often unintentionally switch into it during battle and then madly mash buttons to get back to a different attack. And end up building things instead. Move it to the last number (4?) and make the other skills grayed out with "not researched" subtitle when not available, or move it to something like number 0, far away.
Fix or remove unused skills and items. I've never seen webs. I usually don't see well used babblers, I think people mostly build them in accident/just for fun. Marines don't use other grenades than cluster grenades, and I'm not surprised - aliens are too fast and people don't believe they can hit them with it. When turrets are used, commanders get scolded. Flamethrowers are often bought by rookies who think it's a great weapon against aliens, while it's not, they just instantly die and lose resources. All these items should be changed or thrown out.
Add descriptions to items when buying them from armory. E.g. if you decide to keep flamethrower, write "mostly useful for damaging/disabling alien structures, not very effective against alien lifeforms". Will help rookies a lot.
Get rid of unbuilt invulnerable power nodes. The fact that good players build it to 95% and only finish it when needed adds a) busywork for good players b) confusion for rookies who get yelled at for finishing the power node (something the automatic ingame guidance system told them to do!). There's no benefit, only frustration. When power node is getting built, do it the same way as all other buildings do - start at low health and increase.
Get rid of medpack spam. It's a nasty way to keep uber-skilled players even more godlike. I have played too many games where an extremely skilled player kills 4+ skulks attacking him at once, and then marches forward and destroys everything else in sight including a hive, alone. Because the combination of a high-skilled player and a fast-finger commander can't be beaten by rookies. And they are dumbfounded why the hell is that marine still standing and killing everything, even though he should be ten times dead with all the one-time bites they managed to do before dying over and over again. Add a medpack delay either to receiving side (marine) or to supplying side (commander).
Unify build tool and welder. Either remove welder completely and make builder tool do everything, or have it still possible to purchase and show it as an upgraded build tool (different graphics) with extended abilities (weld marines). Use one key for everything.
Full-sized maps are one of the biggest problems in the game. Until you know maps by heart, you have to run around with map open. It's easier if you're a marine, because you have a minimap, but for an alien, you spend 50% time running around with map open. So first, you don't see anything properly, and second, the map graphics are so terrible that you constantly bump into walls that are not displayed in the map. Please, please, please, for the love of god, redraw the maps and a) make them extremely simple and clean b) include all walls or terrain elevation elements. It is so frustrating to walk around with map covering 90% of your screen, and not being able to exit the room, because the walls are drawn incorrectly. And if you close the map, you have no idea where to go.
Add alien minimap. I know it doesn't make too much sense (marines have HUDs in helmets), but for a rookie, it was one of the top reason why I refused to play aliens. Full-sized map is too clunky for real-time navigation, but without a minimap rookies just run through rooms randomly, or constantly stopping, opening the map, turning into a proper direction, running a few meters and over and over again. And dying, because static skulk is a dead skulk. I have died so many times when studying a map.
Make vent openings glow/get highlighted in alien vision. Vents are almost unused by rookies (and very much unused by me even after 100 hours of experience). Why? Because I can't freaking find them. Some are visible, but many are so well hidden (and the map graphics is so poor), that many times I have spent *minutes* running around a room looking for that particular vent that the map claimed should be somewhere here, and didn't find it. Frustrated, I kept running through the corridors. It's easier than finding vents, even though it means more dying. This goes directly against NS2 intention - sneaky skulks. Make the vent entrances highlighted and draw the maps better. You could also draw the guiding arrows when being near the vent to help discover it, because some of them are really insanely hidden.
When being inside a vent and the vent turns 90% vertically, I find it very hard to navigate. I have to turn around several times to figure out which ways are open, and by that time I lose track of which way I came from, so I need to open my map. Another set of guiding arrows showing possible directions near vent turns would also help a lot.
Show hit indicators by default and show real damage numbers. This is very important for user feedback. It happens very often that you try to chomp somebody but he's too far away or to the side and you don't hit him at all. Without any obvious hit indication, you have no idea, and then you're angry about game bugs. Also, I read somewhere that the damage numbers do not show real damage, but damage before damage reduction (armor types and such). It seems to go along with my experience when I damage a skulk for much more than he should have health (according to after-death stats), but he still doesn't die and kill me. If the numbers are really not final, stop the madness and show real numbers. It would clear some confusion, and it would also help players to discover whether e.g. a rifle or a pistol is more effective at Onos.
Remove movement mechanics which require thousands of hours to master, are unrealistic, and basically misuse the game engine. I'm talking mainly about very advanced lerk movement here. Some players are able to get invincible by performing something like a permanent epileptic seizure moves while still flying 100mph and biting everyone in sight. It's no fun, it's impossible to counter by average players, and it something it shouldn't exist - no creature is able to change its movement direction 10 times in a second. I see it as an engine hack, because I assume the hit detection goes nuts and most of the shots are not registered. There should be a limit on the speed with which you can turn around, regardless of your through-the-roof mouse sensitivity setting. But this also goes the other way - don't add hard-to-master features like strafejumping which will make overpowered players even more overpowered. I know good players need advanced techniques to distinguish themselves, but movement glitches are not a good idea. If there are other such techniques in the game (e.g. if you strafe while walljumping, you're faster), please remove them.
The cost of upgrades (either marine or alien) are off-putting. As a rookie, I die with shotgun as quickly as with rifle, or with lerk as quickly as a skulk. But the cost is disheartening, it takes me 5 minutes to earn it again. At least for marines, the guns are dropped and can be picked up by someone else (usually by good players, who are fed by rookies, because it doesn't work the other way round - good players don't die much and therefore rookies only buy, but almost never pick up for free). For aliens, the money is lost completely. I don't know how to fix this, but I consider it one of the major design issues. In my case, I ended up playing rifle marine or a skulk the whole game (even with 100 personal res), because upgrades made not much difference and only made me feel worse.
Add a game mode in which everything is researched, bases are invulnerable, and players can buy and evolve everything. This can be used by rookies to test their weapons/skills against other players. If they die, they don't need to wait for an eternity and save, they'll just buy/evolve again and experiment more. Something like the current pre-game mode, but all the time, so that you don't need to wait for it. Just a few servers with this "carnage" mode would suffice, it would be mainly for rookies to test everything.
Make the rounds start faster somehow. Usually there's no commander and I suspect some people might not even know that is a problem, they are just happy to fool around in the all-tech-available mode.
Engaging tutorials and practices mode would certainly do wonders for rookies.
I never notice that upgrades are available. Even though it's written on screen and there's an audio cue, I never notice it (there are too many sounds around and too many things happening on the screen). This is not a problem for marines, upgrades are applied automatically and you see weapons in armory. But for aliens, this is crucial, and I believe most rookies don't evolve lifeform traits. Especially when they use a hotkey for evolving last traits after death, you might figure out that a new trait was available for 20 minutes and you still don't use it. It should be more obvious on the evolve screen that the person should pick traits, and if I use a hotkey to evolve it and I'm missing something that could be added (especially when it's free), I should be visibly notified during evolve time with text and audio.
Make entering a comm chair a conscious decision, not just hit E. Ask "do you really want to be a commander? yes/no" and make them click. Explain what commander is, that only experienced people might want to be a commander, and how to log out. Too many rookies hop in the chair by accident, just pressing E because the tooltip says so, and don't know how to get out. Don't start the game immediately after getting a comm chair.
Show some feedback whether I'm welding something or not. Often it happens that I and a different player try to weld something, but I stand a little too far and I'm actually not welding it. But I don't know that, because I have no indication about it, I just see the percentage increase, and I have no idea that it's done by a single person, not the two of us.
It could be a good idea to indicate a server preferred language in the server list. Some servers do it in their names, but many don't. Since this is primarily a team-based game, it would help a lot to know which language the people are most probably going to speak.
Motivate people to use voice chat somehow. Grant badges. Most people are silent.
In the skill tree (J key), don't display just icons, but also names. Rookies don't know the icons, even I still don't remember/recognize some of them. Also, if you don't know the name, you can't ask/search for it.
And some annoyances that I observed:
Stop spawning people facing the ground.
Stop spawning the marine facing a different direction than he was looking into from the third-person view a fraction of a second before (when waiting to be 100% spawned).
Show marine buildings health bars properly when an alien is very close to them and/or facing down (e.g. skulk chomping on RT). Currently they just disappear.
Add shortcuts for buying items from armory. It there are some, make them obvious.
Other thoughts:
I don't see any issues with power node/cysts, as suggested here, really. I think they're quite fine as they are. That doesn't mean the proposals are not improvements, I don't know. I just didn't see any rookies issues with the current state of things.
People are discussing audio cues for 2 hives, 3 hives here. Honestly, I have no idea what it is good for, and neither rookies probably do. What is important is the availability of new upgrades (lifeforms and their traits). Not sure about hive numbers announcement. There are already too many announcements.
It would be great to be able to bind a special key for certain abilities, like parasite, that would perform one-time action, but keep the current attack selected. So that I could click a button to spit a parasite, but still use left mouse button to chomp, without switching. I don't know how good players do it, but they are able to parasite me in midair and instantly bite me a fraction of a second later. I find it very hard to do with default bindings.
the post has been edited now to include a lot of stuff I feel is misguided or irrelevant, but in its form as quoted here I think it's a great laundry list of BASIC STUFF that should have been changed long ago.
Especially stuff like
[*] Make it more obvious who's currently talking.
In particular, make it obvious in what context the currently talking person is, i.e. where are they?
All it needs is a little ))) next to someone on the minimap when the mic is active. god knows why time was invested into the local-voice-chat function at all when the fix was so elementary
I'm still curious as to how infestation would spread without cysts,who/what would control where and when it spreads? Does it spread on it's own depending on the current situation? If so,I don't think I like that idea,I don't want to have to wait for the infestation to realize "Oh,I can spread here now!" after waiting for it to spread to a Tech-Point or something.....
Then again,I could be completely oblivious to what it would actually do,so if I am,could someone tell me what it would do without cysts? I sure am gonna miss the little blobs of orange if they go But I still think Cysts providing bio-luminescent light for the Kharaa would be awesome!
My point is, I know that you are trying to make it easier for newbies, but with this changes it will become Counter Strike: alien infestation.
If you remove cysts, powernodes, upgrade chambers, add electrified extractors. The game will go like this, marines put up RT's, Alients put up RT's and it becomes another bland shooter game. You can't make a tactical invasion of hive with 2 or 3 marines and kill upgrades because to do it you have to kill the whole hive. You can't do power rush because there's no power nodes so you have to destroy base.
How will this benefit NS2?
...
Cheers,
Perhaps Rantology or someone from CDT/UWE can share their thoughts on how they think it might work. I would think certain alien structures would put off infestation and it would spread at the rate they choose. I was thinking Alien RT infestation could spread in all directions and halfway to the nearest RT. Gorge tunnels could provide less infestation and I'm not sure about the other structures. It would force aliens to really focus on structures and what they can get built on the map. Maybe the gorge could help speed up the infestation from a certain structure by healing it or an infestation ability.
How will removing cysts and powernodes make this a bland shooter game? The RT's on both teams are still just as important, you just don't have little things on the ground providing infestation that you have to destroy and you don't have a very quick way to destroy a marine room.
I like some of the proposals on how marine power nodes could always start as unbuilt without the blue "buffer" on all parts of the map. That way, there is no more building till 99% which is kinda silly anyways. If they are always unbuilt with cool alien infested lighting in the room, then marines taking over that room with full power would be a more drastic change, and would feel like marines are taking over the map. I am more against cysts than power nodes. I think power nodes can still work really well with some of the concepts I've seen for how alien infested rooms would look.
Could there be 3 different types of lighting throughout the map?
1) Marine powered rooms - their starting base and when they build power in a room. This would be a really well lit room with no dark areas.
2) Low lighting room/Middle ground - when there is no power built yet, but aliens have not infested the room. This would be less light than a marine powered room, but wouldn't be very difficult to see.
3) Alien infested room - Alien RT or Hive built in room. This would look different than lower lighting (more difficult for marines, easier on aliens). This would only happen if marine power was not on in the room and it was infested.
Also, I think for a reboot to work, you need to pretty much re-release on Steam. Maybe make it Natural Selection 2.1, NS2:Evolved, something to differentiate it so that players that were previously interested and had quickly been frustrated into quitting would be enticed to try the "new improved version".
I can totally picture this on Steam! "You thought they were gone?........think again......FADE BLINKS TOWARDS THE PLAYER WHILE SCREAMINGNatural Selection 2....EVOLVED
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited December 2015
If lerk transition animations stay the same, (exploitable, erratic) coming in for the risky bite is still less risky.
If they're fixed, the risk vs reward may not be worth biting and you'd want spores instead?
For the record, I'm all for making the Lerk an easier to shoot, tankier support role provided we can find a way to fill that power vacuum created in the pre-mid game timeframe.
Maybe instead of messing with bite, replacing spikes with ranged spores in general would be a good simplifying step since rookies already have a problem utilizing them.
Then just make the lifeform scale better with biomass (it's the worst compared to the rest of the lifeforms) to accommodate the smoothed out animations.
Then make T3 spikes insane as the new acid rockets
This way you don't change the way you move as a Lerk but the animations are less erratic for rookies, you have a clear support role that any rookie can utilize (ranged spores) with low risk, the high risk bite is even higher now, and you finally have a game ending tech / proper role for the late game lerk.
Good Lerks are now distinguished from bad Lerks not by their ability to exploit a broken animation - but instead through the decisions they make. It has an easy to use weapon, and a difficult to use weapon.
If lerk transition animations stay the same, (exploitable, erratic) coming in for the risky bite is still less risky.
If they're fixed, the risk vs reward may not be worth biting and you'd want spores instead?
For the record, I'm all for making the Lerk an easier to shoot, tankier support role provided we can find a way to fill that power vacuum created in the pre-mid game timeframe.
Maybe instead of messing with bite, replacing spikes with ranged spores in general would be a good simplifying step since rookies already have a problem utilizing them.
Then just make the lifeform scale better with biomass (it's the worst compared to the rest of the lifeforms) to accommodate the smoothed out animations.
Then make T3 spikes insane as the new acid rockets
This way you don't change the way you move as a Lerk but the animations are less erratic for rookies, you have a clear support role that any rookie can utilize (ranged spores) with low risk, the high risk bite is even higher now, and you finally have a game ending tech / proper role for the late game lerk.
Good Lerks are now distinguished from bad Lerks not by their ability to exploit a broken animation - but instead through the decisions they make. It has an easy to use weapon, and a difficult to use weapon.
I'm 100% fine with these changes making it into the game.
Comments
It's pretty funny that:
A. I agree with every statement of your tl;dr
B. My favorite server I've ever played on was built around ez shuffle vote and conceding quickly and not extending gameplay past it's realistic limits (Tactical Freedom, RIP)
Well, if you want to stop conceding so much and slowing gameplay, get on board with changing the cysting system away from building requirements. I don't think it's intuitively clear what effects that would have to most players.
But "most players" do absolutely nothing instead of welding eachother during lulls in combat. People with thousands of hours don't weld instinctively.
I don't trust these people.
Edit: I used affects instead of effects
I have brought this up in the CDT on numerous occasions however we were unable to do anything about it, I do hope this idea is given some serious consideration by the new dev team.
@WasabiOne
That would simplify the needs of having to run a server for a game mode, and may help keep players engaged for longer.
Think like - play several games of NS2 vanilla, then play a round of MvM, SwS or Siege before jumping back into standard NS2.
One of the things that kept me playing NS1 back in the day was being able to change between NS, CO, or Siege at every map change. This kept me actively playing on the server and meeting new people.
I believe it is possible now. Mods can be loaded only by which map is in use. So you could vote in ns2_seige or whatever and have the seige mod loaded in too.
I also don't see the need to nerf the lerk's movement. If you're an isolated marine in a large room, don't be. Hovering chippers can easily be repelled with lmg fire at almost any distance, anyway. Anything else requires a large degree of skill on the lerk's part, and NS2 should reward good play. The fact that the lerk can be dropped so suddenly when caught unawares is an adequate balance check.
That mechanic would still be there, it'd just be a whole heap easier and more powerful. I'm neither for nor against projectile spores, but if they become a thing, they need to be hive3+.
Then again,I could be completely oblivious to what it would actually do,so if I am,could someone tell me what it would do without cysts? I sure am gonna miss the little blobs of orange if they go
Also even though a lot of this was covered already, I just wanna make sure my thread I made in the I&S category recently didn't go to waste.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/139559/modernization-spawn-loadouts-and-other-things (Please take a look)
At least lot of people seemed to like the detailed loadout/buy menus and think they would be great for new players as well.
That's, what I've been saying all along - that's not the reason for the nerf though. The reason for the nerf, is that lerks too easily get away with poor decisions. They engage in a fight that they had no business in, and escape because of the erratic movements. It's too easy to play lerk this way imo. I want to up the skill ceiling in this regard. I want to make it imperative to make good decisions, rather than rely on a ridiculously easy to perform movement mechanic.
And let me just re-iterate, I main as lerk, and I'm not coming from this as someone butthurt cus he can't kill lerks - in fact I've invested countless hours to specialize against this lifeform and I feel like I do well. But it's not about me. It's about the vast majority of players who aren't willing to specialize against a single lifeform like that. And because I do see bad lerks get rewarded with bad decisions because they can't get hit by the average player as they exit.
To be fair, fades have a similar problem, but not to the same extend as lerk imo.
To make an analogy to overwatch. Tracer is a hero that similarly, can pick and choose her engagements because of her mobility. Moreover, she can run in and immediately realize "this was a mistake", and press a button to escape.
You can not do the same thing with, say a reaper. If you run in at the wrong time, they'll chase you down and kill you. These high mobility characters, like Tracer, often get revered as having "high skill ceilings", but I don't agree. Because they excuse bad decisions, by allowing you to pick bad engagements and still escape. It's far more difficult to play the character that allows for zero mistakes imo.
As case and point; In the first week of overwatch beta, there was a video with clockwork, counting something like 20 killstreak as tracer against the dev team. You think he gets away with that with any other class with next to no practise? No, it's because he's playing a forgiving character.
That buy menu looks really interesting, tidy it up a bit and it looks way more informative @IeptBarakat
Lerk's ability to turn instantly while gliding definitely needs a rebalancing. For a class which travels so fast, so versatile and strikes so hard, Lerk is currently too good at dodging bullets, especially during early game. Shotgun is the counter to Lerk at close range, but Lerk spikes also happen to counter Shotgun. Something has to give, for skilled Lerks to be more balanced. Removing instant 180 degree turning seems like the obvious answer.
Someone had also brought up earlier (would anyone confirm or bust this myth?), that it is possible for clients to mispredict the position of Lerk because they do not have much predictable movement physics during glide. Deliberately causing hit detection errors would be the last thing this game needs.
This hasn't been my experience, I guess. I find that bad lerks are a dime a dozen, and they pay for their poor movement skills more than almost any other lifeform does (I see walker fades escape bad situations in pubs far more often than I see crappy lerks make it out alive). I think the ceiling is about where it should be. People who can move as well as you describe aren't as common in the pub community as is suggested.
If someone doesn't want to "specialize against a single lifeform" they're playing the wrong game. Competent marines should be expected to learn the common movement patterns and escape lanes for all five lifeforms - the game is built around it. Neutering or dulling down the unique movement capacities of each lifeform is not the way to achieve proper balance in the metagame. And I'm not convinced that bad lerks are so commonly rewarded for casual play. If anything, the only lerks I see with amazing KDRs are those who do precisely what you want to encourage: make good decisions.
That sounds extremely similar to the comments about shadowstep before it was replaced with blink. I don't mean that in a positive way.
I am a new player that started less than 1 year ago.
Please leave cysts on, how can cysts be complicated. If you are a marine you shoot them. Same with power. It only gets more complicated if you are a commander, but if you are a commander you should know how this things work. I also love the alien cysting mecanics, I can do offensive cysts and drop a crag right before my team starts attacking a marine point.
In my opinion the game is quite balanced, it only gets unbalanced when 2 players kill an entire team.
One more time, Please don't remove cysts or powernodes.
What could be improved:
Increase medpack pickup radius, I don't like to play marine comm because between my bad internet connection and bad aim I miss 40% of my medpacks. Most times I miss them by milimeters, so yeah increasing pickup by a bit wouldn't hurt.
Maybe put some cooldown on repeated medpacks, this is because if you have a pr0 marine, he will just smash 5 skulks biting him because the comm his just spamming the med packs.
I am reading the doc and "Electrified extractors as a means of passive resource protection" really? How is a skulk going to be able to bite RTs to force the marines back
Removing upgrade chambers (those are the shells/ shades right?) Also doesn't make much sense. They add another game mechanic, I like to go into a undefended hive and just try to kill one of those.
My point is, I know that you are trying to make it easier for newbies, but with this changes it will become Counter Strike: alien infestation.
If you remove cysts, powernodes, upgrade chambers, add electrified extractors. The game will go like this, marines put up RT's, Alients put up RT's and it becomes another bland shooter game. You can't make a tactical invasion of hive with 2 or 3 marines and kill upgrades because to do it you have to kill the whole hive. You can't do power rush because there's no power nodes so you have to destroy base.
How will this benefit NS2?
Also some games are very one sided because I find a lot of people start losing after two minutes and want to reset the game. I am new to comm but I never surrender. Yesterday my team won a game because they rushed our hive with 8 exos and we killed their only comm station. Before this everyone wanted to surrender and game was very one sided but I tried to keep them going, as a comm your job is to keep the morale up before anything else.
Might sound a bit harsh but I am appreciate the work they are putting into one of the only two games I play and am looking forward for updates, I am just giving my feedback as a non-veteran player.
Cheers,
If there's one thing I've learned it's that Dunkin' Donuts isn't popular because it's good. It's popular because it's always the same everywhere and people are terrified of change, for better or worse.
You loose big when you fail. Sg versus lerk. One loose the shotgun against a flying chicken (and the hitreg issue) and usually have to buy it again. The other one loose a lifeform against the same issue.
I'm still voting for class respawn. Many systems can be implemented . See suggestion new site later.
Yeah, 2 minutes are too early to assess (especialy for marines, which can respawn fast and retake the map - especialy on servers that increase starting IP count).
Though if the teams are extremely stacked, there should be reset and then FET. I WISH THERE WAS A VOTE FOR THAT OR NO FORCED DELAY BETWEEN THOSE TWO VOTES. I experience this comedy every fourth game or so on rookie servers:
1) FET vote fails
2) veterans by some quantum tunneling or dunno how end up in one team and the innocent newbies in the other
3) some newbie innocently starts the game
4) even more veterans (who know proper team making and sportsmanship) F4 in hope of quickly forcing new game and team creation
5) the error is realized and reset is voted
6) some newbie will get restless during the mandatory wait between votes (for FET) or manual player shifting and starts the game again.
7) nobody feels like voting reset again
8) newbies get whipped hard in humiliating fashion
9) third of the newbies never play this game again
10) there are some lessons learnt and FET/Shuffle is voted and next few games are good.
But on most situations I observe the opposite. People do not concede frequently enough (I play in EU - maybe it's some cultural thing
But what do you mean by that?
You think they should turn NS2 into another counterstrike?
Some things need to change, like the game pacing. I love playing gorge but as soon as I build a defensive position, either I make it too good and we just instantly take control of the map further ahead. Or i don't even have time to get 3 hydras up because marines are already rushing in with grenade launchers.
Don't know how to address this, maybe diminishing returns on RTs, or make the RTs give resources slower.
Cysts and power nodes make the game fun, but I would liek to see how it would be that rooms without power node had really low light. The only light being from the cysts like on some screenshots that popped up earlier.
But i'm kinda new. I only play gorge, welder marine/FT or comm because i can't hit for shit when the skulks are going aerial acrobatics, also I like to play support. I stopped buying shotguns altogether, for me those resources are much better spent on pulse grenades or mines.
So 4th rt gets -1 penalty on whatever it gives, 5th gets -2 etc until the last rts are just for having a nice 'buffer'.
Mustve been suggested before, surely. Dont know what the negatives where.
I agree cysts shouldn't be removed entirely.(it would make alot of the loading screens look like "what are those?" to new players) I actually made a suggestion once saying that both teams should use light as a mechanic where marines have...well....lights,and aliens used cysts to create Bio-Luminescence,and instead of emergency lights coming on after the power went out,they stayed off. This would make fighting without power REALLY fun! (and scary!) I mean imagine walking into an almost pitch-black room that has an orange glow all over it,and what's that you see on the wall? You turn on your flash light(WHY WASN'T IT ON BEFORE?!)and what do you see? ALIENS! Oh gosh that would give me chills so bad! Of course to the Kharaa darkness wouldn't be a problem for them as Alien Vision would need to be improved. Plus I imagine them seeing more Bio-Luminescence than Humans. (Better eyesight....ya know?) And maybe Marines could get better flashlights and ARCs getting headlights?
Basically,it would allow cysts and infestation to co-exist without the use of cyst chains n' such,while adding a whole new mechanic that doesn't involve actual fighting,but how the environment looks depending on the current power......if there is any
There are two big areas I feel need improvement.
First, along with in-depth tutorials, I think new players would benefit from some meaningful training area. Currently, we have a choice of open sandbox, which is good for what it is, or we have play against bots, which is apparently code for "aliens win in 30 seconds because marines bots really are quite terrible". Couple better bot training with in-depth tutorials covering all structures, game mechanics, equipment, and life forms, and new players won't have the frustration of trying to get familiar with everything and get competent while getting slaughtered.
Second, I think upgrades and new life forms and abilities should permanently unlock. The fact that whatever you just spent your resources on is gone if you die means only those that have mastered the game get to spend any meaningful amount of time using the different equipment or playing as anything other than a skulk. I myself, not having mastered anything to any great extent, find myself sitting on my resources, playing as a skulk or with the lmg, simply because I know I will die in a minute or two and those resources will be gone forever.
Maybe changing the rate at which players gain personal resources so mistakes are less a permanent punishment would be a good idea?
Also, I think for a reboot to work, you need to pretty much re-release on Steam. Maybe make it Natural Selection 2.1, NS2:Evolved, something to differentiate it so that players that were previously interested and had quickly been frustrated into quitting would be enticed to try the "new improved version".
the post has been edited now to include a lot of stuff I feel is misguided or irrelevant, but in its form as quoted here I think it's a great laundry list of BASIC STUFF that should have been changed long ago.
Especially stuff like
[*] Make it more obvious who's currently talking.
In particular, make it obvious in what context the currently talking person is, i.e. where are they?
All it needs is a little ))) next to someone on the minimap when the mic is active. god knows why time was invested into the local-voice-chat function at all when the fix was so elementary
Perhaps Rantology or someone from CDT/UWE can share their thoughts on how they think it might work. I would think certain alien structures would put off infestation and it would spread at the rate they choose. I was thinking Alien RT infestation could spread in all directions and halfway to the nearest RT. Gorge tunnels could provide less infestation and I'm not sure about the other structures. It would force aliens to really focus on structures and what they can get built on the map. Maybe the gorge could help speed up the infestation from a certain structure by healing it or an infestation ability.
How will removing cysts and powernodes make this a bland shooter game? The RT's on both teams are still just as important, you just don't have little things on the ground providing infestation that you have to destroy and you don't have a very quick way to destroy a marine room.
I like some of the proposals on how marine power nodes could always start as unbuilt without the blue "buffer" on all parts of the map. That way, there is no more building till 99% which is kinda silly anyways. If they are always unbuilt with cool alien infested lighting in the room, then marines taking over that room with full power would be a more drastic change, and would feel like marines are taking over the map. I am more against cysts than power nodes. I think power nodes can still work really well with some of the concepts I've seen for how alien infested rooms would look.
Could there be 3 different types of lighting throughout the map?
1) Marine powered rooms - their starting base and when they build power in a room. This would be a really well lit room with no dark areas.
2) Low lighting room/Middle ground - when there is no power built yet, but aliens have not infested the room. This would be less light than a marine powered room, but wouldn't be very difficult to see.
3) Alien infested room - Alien RT or Hive built in room. This would look different than lower lighting (more difficult for marines, easier on aliens). This would only happen if marine power was not on in the room and it was infested.
I can totally picture this on Steam! "You thought they were gone?........think again......FADE BLINKS TOWARDS THE PLAYER WHILE SCREAMING Natural Selection 2....EVOLVED
who will win?......"
@Deck_
That's a very interesting concept for better lights!
If they're fixed, the risk vs reward may not be worth biting and you'd want spores instead?
For the record, I'm all for making the Lerk an easier to shoot, tankier support role provided we can find a way to fill that power vacuum created in the pre-mid game timeframe.
Maybe instead of messing with bite, replacing spikes with ranged spores in general would be a good simplifying step since rookies already have a problem utilizing them.
Then just make the lifeform scale better with biomass (it's the worst compared to the rest of the lifeforms) to accommodate the smoothed out animations.
Then make T3 spikes insane as the new acid rockets
This way you don't change the way you move as a Lerk but the animations are less erratic for rookies, you have a clear support role that any rookie can utilize (ranged spores) with low risk, the high risk bite is even higher now, and you finally have a game ending tech / proper role for the late game lerk.
Good Lerks are now distinguished from bad Lerks not by their ability to exploit a broken animation - but instead through the decisions they make. It has an easy to use weapon, and a difficult to use weapon.
I'm 100% fine with these changes making it into the game.