For the entire duration of NS2, everyone's #1 complaint has been how huge the gap in skill is between a new player and even a mildly committed player. Anyone who tries to pick up this game gets ridiculously roflstomped by people that have been playing it for 10 years. Roflstomping is not what makes NS good!
How many threads have I been hearing "every game is a stack, I get a good round one out of every 10." I see at least one comment to that effect per day in these forums. This sort of change is the only thing that has a hope of fixing that! embrace it!
What makes NS2 great is the complexity of the combat and the strategy, not how difficult it is to aim effectively. Naturally, the current situation probably still needs some clever rebalancing, but it doesn't take away from any of the things that make NS great, and hopefully fixes everyone's #1 complaint.
I know you mean well, but if you really think making hitboxes larger is going to have any positive effect regarding the skill gap, you're simply delusional. If anything, it'll make experienced players stomp rookies even harder. Just like the HP bar, this change completely misses the goal it was meant to achieve, while dumbing down the game in the progress.
The only significant effects changes like these have is that it'll push away even more veteran players. But perhaps that's the goal after all.
Do we at least agree that reducing the skill gap is a good objective?
That is an absolutely terrible objective. It is good to lower the skill floor though.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
No one wants to reduce the fucking skill gap. People want to play even matches. Learn language similarities so retaryed clarifications lile this don't wind up the topic of their own thread
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
..I want to reduce the skill gap?..
I don't remotely enjoy my teammates losing every engagement, thus losing the round AND I don't enjoy melting a ground lerk. Do you?
I much more enjoy playing with similarly skilled players.
And I don't see the benefit that comes from having such a skill gap?
It's not fun for either player on the ends of the spectrum.
It's easier than ever for high skilled marines to stomp aliens at the start of the game, which cannot be fun for the new players (or any players) playing as skulks.
I don't think you guys should be playing games with the community, tell people what you want to do upfront and do it. The inevitable outrage isn't going to go away because you delay the reveal, it just makes people feel deceived.
That said I like bigger hitboxes, because NS2 is a ludicrously fast-paced game and it's impossible to intentionally avoid shooting bullets through a skulk's legs etc. Fudging the hitboxes to make the hit reg feel more consistent is standard practice in shooters like this. However it should go without saying that time to kill and subsequently game balance is going to shift in a big way when you mess with hitboxes, and I don't think you should make a change like that without at least attempting to compensate in alien survivability.
edit: Nevermind, idk why I even bother since apparently everybody is an expert who has surely tested their own claims before making them, right? I'm just wasting my time saying anything.
MephillesGermanyJoin Date: 2013-08-07Member: 186634Members, NS2 Map Tester, NS2 Community Developer
edited July 2016
tbh I don't want that change. Just thought it might help though (Sometimes I do suggestions that are against my personal opinion if I think it helps contributing towards the goal... not many people do this) --> refers to proposed bite changes 2 pages ago
Oh and the only way to reduce skill gap effectively is adding something that in a mathmatical level is ineffective on paper but easy to use. Like it has been mentioned alot before, weapons like the noob tube. Easy to use and to some degree effective, though there are weapons that are much more effective if used correctly
On another note I don't think it is necessary to reduce skill gap if we have a matchmaking system with enough people to run it going. If not then the only way to get enjoyable rounds for most people is to reduce the skillgap (which I am still not 100% convived of if this is a good idea)
I don't remotely enjoy my teammates losing every engagement, thus losing the round AND I don't enjoy melting a ground lerk. Do you?
I much more enjoy playing with similarly skilled players.
And I don't see the benefit that comes from having such a skill gap?
It's not fun for either player on the ends of the spectrum.
That is not a problem of skill gap, but a problem of low playerbase, dead comp scene and therefore all skill levels playing on the same server.
I think most multiplayer online games still have the misconception that people who frag a lot are some kind of human-computer hybrid with insane hand-eye coordination and time warping reflexes fueled by gallons of energy drink. In reality the snappy reflex shots and insane tracking mostly kick in as a last resort move when all the other advantages are lost. Whenever possible, a good player wins the engagement with positioning and strategy way before any kind of aiming skills get into picture.
I remember when Hugh was trying to create a tutorial on how to aim better. I looked at some of his recent videos and was quite surprised of how good his raw, mechanical ability to track stuff was. Meanwhile the rest of his play style was incredibly restless and indecisive. He was blasting away at targets that he couldn't damage efficiently and distracted by things that were no real threat at the given moment. As a result he wasn't focusing on the actually essential threats and targets and put himself into situations that many top tier players couldn't win consistently.
The same goes in CS:GO: the most noticeable difference between a low and a mid skill player is their crosshair placement. The lower skilled people constantly put themselves into situations where they need to snap across the screen whereas a decent player has the crosshair positioned so that the enemy walks right into it when the engagement starts. Once your crosshair is already roughly there, it's not that hard to learn to do a little bit of spray control or adjustment for headshot.
I'd like to think the same goes for NS2. The big thing is getting players to these situations where they win engagements without pulling off some kind of backflip 270 jumpshot while simultaneously playing a burning piano. The best way to start improving your aim is to find enough of 'comfortable' engagements where you see the enemy in time and win or at least cause critical damage before you have to worry about all the teeth and claws. Once you're finding enough of these easy engagements, you start getting comfortable with the aiming itself and as a result start winning some of those more aiming intense skirmishes too.
How do you teach players to find the good engagements is a trickier thing of course. That's where you'd probably want some streamers, comp coverage, replays and all that. Since those aren't really viable options at the moment, I think a lot comes down to clarifying the concepts, presentation and feedback further.
How would you feel about this change if they looked at the average accuracy before and after the change, then buffed lifeform health to make the average time to kill identical? (You'd want to look at the numbers multiplicatively, so that going from 10%->15% enters the average in the same way as going from 20->30%) Overall, engagements would play out the same way as before, except that players who aim worse would hit more often, and the game would feel more satisfying. Would this address your concerns? If the change was all about "feel" and didn't affect the outcomes of encounters much, would you like it more?
But it would? You're not taking into account firing rate, clip sizes, different weapons, minimum time to kill, and thats just off the top of my head. How do you determine "average" accuracy reliably anyway? Do you shoot the same percentages against all lifeforms? Are we just going to take the average percentage the playtesters hit in a controlled environment?
This is as relevant as asking if you would like suger high fructose corn syrup more if it was salty.
edit: Nevermind, idk why I even bother since apparently everybody is an expert who has surely tested their own claims before making them, right? I'm just wasting my time saying anything.
You concede?
Ironhorse would never concede, he just F4s to the ready room.
For the entire duration of NS2, everyone's #1 complaint has been how huge the gap in skill is between a new player and even a mildly committed player. Anyone who tries to pick up this game gets ridiculously roflstomped by people that have been playing it for 10 years. Roflstomping is not what makes NS good!
How many threads have I been hearing "every game is a stack, I get a good round one out of every 10." I see at least one comment to that effect per day in these forums. This sort of change is the only thing that has a hope of fixing that! embrace it!
What makes NS2 great is the complexity of the combat and the strategy, not how difficult it is to aim effectively. Naturally, the current situation probably still needs some clever rebalancing, but it doesn't take away from any of the things that make NS great, and hopefully fixes everyone's #1 complaint.
I know you mean well, but if you really think making hitboxes larger is going to have any positive effect regarding the skill gap, you're simply delusional. If anything, it'll make experienced players stomp rookies even harder. Just like the HP bar, this change completely misses the goal it was meant to achieve, while dumbing down the game in the progress.
The only significant effects changes like these have is that it'll push away even more veteran players. But perhaps that's the goal after all.
Do we at least agree that reducing the skill gap is a good objective?
Of course. I really think the devs are honestly trying their best and mean well, but for every step forwards they take two steps back unfortunately.
The way to reduce the skill gap is to make the game easier to learn, not easier to play. That should be the goal. Adding rookie-only servers was a great move. The new tutorials were a major improvement (though there's still lacking substantial information on how to play alien lifeforms). Their efforts to improve balance with Hive 2.0 are commendable. Those are things that do good without dumbing down the game and needlessly screwing up balance. This is the path they need to follow.
The way to reduce the skill gap is to make the game easier to learn, not easier to play.
The game is too complex and unforgiving to somehow make it easier to learn without making it easier to play - unless you want to start from scratch and make NS3.
That's why Rookie Only servers and tutorials were the only safe approach in that regard. There really isn't any way to make the game itself intrinsically easier to learn while playing, without making it easier to play.
I see many nodding their heads here in agreement regarding that NS shouldn't be easy to play, or that the skill gap shouldn't be lessened. I just don't get the benefit of this at all.... Does anyone care to provide one?
Unless it's just that people enjoy stroking their own ego, feeling like gods amongst ants.. I see no benefit to having such a large gap.
Does it feel good to spend 800 hours on a MP game until you are adequate? Not really.. It feels great along the way as you improve, but you are a rarity to last that long - the average NS2 user has like 20-40 hours before quitting. So you're sacrificing your desire for incredibly slow improvement for a playerbase.
I don't want to get back into arguing over semantics on terminology, but I feel like many of you fear that an easier to learn game somehow means it will be less skillfull. That's hogwash.
CS is easy to learn, difficult to master. So is Othello (a board game) and many others.. There is no downside to making a game easier to play, especially if the skill ceiling is stupidly high like NS2.
The way to reduce the skill gap is to make the game easier to learn, not easier to play.
The game is too complex and unforgiving to somehow make it easier to learn without making it easier to play - unless you want to start from scratch and make NS3.
That's why Rookie Only servers and tutorials were the only safe approach in that regard. There really isn't any way to make the game itself intrinsically easier to learn while playing, without making it easier to play.
I see many nodding their heads here in agreement regarding that NS shouldn't be easy to play, or that the skill gap shouldn't be lessened. I just don't get the benefit of this at all.... Does anyone care to provide one?
Unless it's just that people enjoy stroking their own ego, feeling like gods amongst ants.. I see no benefit to having such a large gap.
Does it feel good to spend 800 hours on a MP game until you are adequate? Not really.. It feels great along the way as you improve, but you are a rarity to last that long - the average NS2 user has like 20-40 hours before quitting. So you're sacrificing your desire for incredibly slow improvement for a playerbase.
I don't want to get back into arguing over semantics on terminology, but I feel like many of you fear that an easier to learn game somehow means it will be less skillfull. That's hogwash.
CS is easy to learn, difficult to master. So is Othello (a board game) and many others.. There is no downside to making a game easier to play, especially if the skill ceiling is stupidly high like NS2.
The very reason this game still has a playerbase is it's complexity. That's the benefit. The more you take away from what made this game unique to begin with, the more you'll dilute the core community that's kept this game alive for such a long time.
I don't want to get back into arguing over semantics on terminology, but I feel like many of you fear that an easier to learn game somehow means it will be less skillfull. That's hogwash.
CS is easy to learn, difficult to master. So is Othello (a board game) and many others.. There is no downside to making a game easier to play, especially if the skill ceiling is stupidly high like NS2.
You are contradicting yourself. Everyone and their mother wants the game to be easier to learn yet difficult to master, but the current route is going towards easier to learn and easier to master.
I see many nodding their heads here in agreement regarding that NS shouldn't be easy to play, or that the skill gap shouldn't be lessened.
I just don't get the benefit of this at all.... Does anyone care to provide one?
Isn't it obvious? How can you have been a member of this community for so long and still ask questions like this?
For players like me (and I like to think there are many within the core population of active NS2 players), the enjoyment in a game comes from the fact that while something feels very difficult at first, you know that with enough practising and dedication, you can git gud and start performing better, taking the game mechanics as your own. When you still suck, you want to learn from the best, playing with and against them and watching youtube/twitch channels from those who are better than you. It's not the fact that you beat players of lower skill than you that keeps you going, it's the fact that you're beating your earlier self by improving.
Dumb the game down and lower the skill ceiling, and suddenly you hit your apex much quicker and lose interest. Furthermore, if you're already at your peak, and someone else is still playing better than you, then clearly there is something that makes them an overall better player than you. Why should that be taken away from them? If someone truly has better hand/eye coordination and/or reflexes etc, why should they be lowered closer to my level?
You can argue that a huge skill gap between players and no matchmaking leads into crapfests of rounds ending in stomps. And you would be right. But that is not the problem of skill levels, that is a problem of an extremely small playerbase corroborated by the lack of matchmaking. Next you will argue that the cause for a small playerbase is the skill gap, but there is absolutely no evidence about that. The game has been continously dumbed down for the past months, yet player numbers keep decreasing. And what I'm afraid of is that the dev team will dumb the game down and alienate their veteran playerbase with no one taking their place simply because NS2 doesn't offer gameplay that interests the masses.
Create some drill instructor icons, give it to volunteers / sociable persons, put them ingame and have some icons floating above them when they talk using the instructor power.
The way to reduce the skill gap is to make the game easier to learn, not easier to play.
The game is too complex and unforgiving to somehow make it easier to learn without making it easier to play - unless you want to start from scratch and make NS3.
That's why Rookie Only servers and tutorials were the only safe approach in that regard. There really isn't any way to make the game itself intrinsically easier to learn while playing, without making it easier to play.
I see many nodding their heads here in agreement regarding that NS shouldn't be easy to play, or that the skill gap shouldn't be lessened. I just don't get the benefit of this at all....
Too complex of a game to make it easier to learn?! That is an awful excuse! Watch this:
This is EXACTLY the kind of tutorials that should have been being worked on, not the watering down which we have been provided since the pdt took over. Just as the cdt trumped uwe in development, there's more useful and ACTUALLY applicable game knowledge in that one short scenario tutorial made by a group of dedicated and unpaid community members than in the revamped tutorials the pdt has put forward. You can't seriously believe that the tutorials in game are even close to comprehensive or good enough, especially when tutorials like that exist. You guys can do so much better.
Playtesters, developers, you guys should feel EMBARRASSED for the state you have brought the game to. None of you are able to put your own agendas or egos aside to take any sort of criticism constructively, consider what the overwhelming majority of the once existing player base was telling you guys. You all act like you can do no wrong, like you've got it all figured out, like YOUR ideas and answers for the game are the only ones worth a damn. You cannot even start to accuse ppl of wanting to stroke their own egos when that is essentially all you pts/devs do. Your ideas are best, there's no reasoning with the rest of the benighted community, so forget em - they just have to deal with it. Your way or the highway. It is total bs.
Its been ridiculous since pdt took over and is now looking to be beyond hope.
Sure, maybe there's no downside to making a game easier... when its in early development or beta! Not when the game has been officially out for nearly 4 years! At this point, your question about wondering what the downside of making it easier to play is like asking a triple-a baseball team why they don't wanna go back to playing coach pitch or t-ball. They wanted the big leagues, not to see their game neutered! Will they hit the ball more? Yes. Will they feel like they have accomplished anything, like their skill is being made full use of, their precision and training had paid off? Absolutely not!
You've taken away our sharp, pointy scissors (we're adults after all, ns2 is not a children's game like subnautica), and given us dull, rounded-tip Fiskars (the kind you learn to cut paper with in pre-school), and then can't understand why people hate the change.
Please, politely remove your heads from one another's bums, and take a step back. You have dismantled several large communities, ignored the feedback of many many many many many many people who know the game intrinsically well, and refuse to acknowledge the damage that has been done in the process. Yes, your farts stink. Please take a dose of community-driven bean-o, several helpings of humble pie, and consider making ns2 great again.
On a final note, i want to call on @IronHorse specifically and say that i recognize its not fair to make it seem like all this is frustration is directed at you personally. You are probably the most active here on the forums and i think you often get undeserved flak because of it. In fact i hope that no dev or pt take this as a personal attack. Despite my extreme disappointment with where the game currently is, i still appreciate the fact that anybody has done anything for this game since uwe's abandonment and i respect you as individuals. But seriously, please please please let this be a wake-up call to you all that you have undone the effort the cdt originally put forth when it first started to resuscitate ns2. You have achieved the total opposite.
~65% of games played are on rookie only servers.~80% of unique players quit NS2 in the first 20 hours of gameplay. It takes the average rookie 25 hours of gameplay to get out of rookie only servers. Think about that for a moment. ... ~65% of games are played by rookies, with 80% of those players playing quitting in the first 20 hours, before they are done with what the game considers rookies.
Rookies play on rookie only servers, where the oh so evil (sarcasm) veterans can't get to them. The skill gap is a big problem in NS2, but it is not the root cause of poor player retention. So what is?
Aliens definitely need a buff early game. With the hit change as a marine who can somewhat shoot it's easy for me to crush the first wave of skulks and destroy cysts/ RTs to the point the aliens never get higher life forms.
If due to some amazing alien team play or incredibly deerpy Marines (or sometimes both) the aliens maintain 2 res nodes outside of base, the balance seems to swing the other way once fades pop, and even more so after onos are up.
If hit boxes must be oversized for some reason that I don't understand have you considered going back to the old skulk hotboxes and shrinking the skulk model slightly? That way skulks are as easy to hit as they were before and they still have an oversized hitbox. Other hit boxes for the higher life forms don't seem to be too bad, so you could leave those as-is.
This combined with the implemented better bite radius (which makes up close and personal skulks much more dangerous) may make early alien game play exciting and fun again, even when your team is out matched.....
This also has the plus of not needing to tweak skulk HP/Armor to try to balance everything out.....
Comments
That is an absolutely terrible objective. It is good to lower the skill floor though.
I don't remotely enjoy my teammates losing every engagement, thus losing the round AND I don't enjoy melting a ground lerk. Do you?
I much more enjoy playing with similarly skilled players.
And I don't see the benefit that comes from having such a skill gap?
It's not fun for either player on the ends of the spectrum.
That said I like bigger hitboxes, because NS2 is a ludicrously fast-paced game and it's impossible to intentionally avoid shooting bullets through a skulk's legs etc. Fudging the hitboxes to make the hit reg feel more consistent is standard practice in shooters like this. However it should go without saying that time to kill and subsequently game balance is going to shift in a big way when you mess with hitboxes, and I don't think you should make a change like that without at least attempting to compensate in alien survivability.
You concede?
Oh and the only way to reduce skill gap effectively is adding something that in a mathmatical level is ineffective on paper but easy to use. Like it has been mentioned alot before, weapons like the noob tube. Easy to use and to some degree effective, though there are weapons that are much more effective if used correctly
On another note I don't think it is necessary to reduce skill gap if we have a matchmaking system with enough people to run it going. If not then the only way to get enjoyable rounds for most people is to reduce the skillgap (which I am still not 100% convived of if this is a good idea)
what good is using your dwindling playerbase as playtesters when you intend to ignore all feedback you get from it anyway.
New plan:
Wasn't there a beta branch created on steam for competetive that retained the old version?
Maybe we could all switch that.
That is not a problem of skill gap, but a problem of low playerbase, dead comp scene and therefore all skill levels playing on the same server.
I remember when Hugh was trying to create a tutorial on how to aim better. I looked at some of his recent videos and was quite surprised of how good his raw, mechanical ability to track stuff was. Meanwhile the rest of his play style was incredibly restless and indecisive. He was blasting away at targets that he couldn't damage efficiently and distracted by things that were no real threat at the given moment. As a result he wasn't focusing on the actually essential threats and targets and put himself into situations that many top tier players couldn't win consistently.
The same goes in CS:GO: the most noticeable difference between a low and a mid skill player is their crosshair placement. The lower skilled people constantly put themselves into situations where they need to snap across the screen whereas a decent player has the crosshair positioned so that the enemy walks right into it when the engagement starts. Once your crosshair is already roughly there, it's not that hard to learn to do a little bit of spray control or adjustment for headshot.
I'd like to think the same goes for NS2. The big thing is getting players to these situations where they win engagements without pulling off some kind of backflip 270 jumpshot while simultaneously playing a burning piano. The best way to start improving your aim is to find enough of 'comfortable' engagements where you see the enemy in time and win or at least cause critical damage before you have to worry about all the teeth and claws. Once you're finding enough of these easy engagements, you start getting comfortable with the aiming itself and as a result start winning some of those more aiming intense skirmishes too.
How do you teach players to find the good engagements is a trickier thing of course. That's where you'd probably want some streamers, comp coverage, replays and all that. Since those aren't really viable options at the moment, I think a lot comes down to clarifying the concepts, presentation and feedback further.
I didn't realise how much I wanted this as an in-game achievement until now.
But it would? You're not taking into account firing rate, clip sizes, different weapons, minimum time to kill, and thats just off the top of my head. How do you determine "average" accuracy reliably anyway? Do you shoot the same percentages against all lifeforms? Are we just going to take the average percentage the playtesters hit in a controlled environment?
This is as relevant as asking if you would like suger high fructose corn syrup more if it was salty.
I accidently caught myself 360 shooting an onos. I don't know if that threw him off. I died anyway.
Ironhorse would never concede, he just F4s to the ready room.
Of course. I really think the devs are honestly trying their best and mean well, but for every step forwards they take two steps back unfortunately.
The way to reduce the skill gap is to make the game easier to learn, not easier to play. That should be the goal. Adding rookie-only servers was a great move. The new tutorials were a major improvement (though there's still lacking substantial information on how to play alien lifeforms). Their efforts to improve balance with Hive 2.0 are commendable. Those are things that do good without dumbing down the game and needlessly screwing up balance. This is the path they need to follow.
That's why Rookie Only servers and tutorials were the only safe approach in that regard. There really isn't any way to make the game itself intrinsically easier to learn while playing, without making it easier to play.
I see many nodding their heads here in agreement regarding that NS shouldn't be easy to play, or that the skill gap shouldn't be lessened.
I just don't get the benefit of this at all.... Does anyone care to provide one?
Unless it's just that people enjoy stroking their own ego, feeling like gods amongst ants.. I see no benefit to having such a large gap.
Does it feel good to spend 800 hours on a MP game until you are adequate? Not really.. It feels great along the way as you improve, but you are a rarity to last that long - the average NS2 user has like 20-40 hours before quitting. So you're sacrificing your desire for incredibly slow improvement for a playerbase.
I don't want to get back into arguing over semantics on terminology, but I feel like many of you fear that an easier to learn game somehow means it will be less skillfull. That's hogwash.
CS is easy to learn, difficult to master. So is Othello (a board game) and many others.. There is no downside to making a game easier to play, especially if the skill ceiling is stupidly high like NS2.
Yes please.
Wow, wrong. Killcams.
Also, is there a reason you didn't answer my question?
The very reason this game still has a playerbase is it's complexity. That's the benefit. The more you take away from what made this game unique to begin with, the more you'll dilute the core community that's kept this game alive for such a long time.
You are contradicting yourself. Everyone and their mother wants the game to be easier to learn yet difficult to master, but the current route is going towards easier to learn and easier to master.
Isn't it obvious? How can you have been a member of this community for so long and still ask questions like this?
For players like me (and I like to think there are many within the core population of active NS2 players), the enjoyment in a game comes from the fact that while something feels very difficult at first, you know that with enough practising and dedication, you can git gud and start performing better, taking the game mechanics as your own. When you still suck, you want to learn from the best, playing with and against them and watching youtube/twitch channels from those who are better than you. It's not the fact that you beat players of lower skill than you that keeps you going, it's the fact that you're beating your earlier self by improving.
Dumb the game down and lower the skill ceiling, and suddenly you hit your apex much quicker and lose interest. Furthermore, if you're already at your peak, and someone else is still playing better than you, then clearly there is something that makes them an overall better player than you. Why should that be taken away from them? If someone truly has better hand/eye coordination and/or reflexes etc, why should they be lowered closer to my level?
You can argue that a huge skill gap between players and no matchmaking leads into crapfests of rounds ending in stomps. And you would be right. But that is not the problem of skill levels, that is a problem of an extremely small playerbase corroborated by the lack of matchmaking. Next you will argue that the cause for a small playerbase is the skill gap, but there is absolutely no evidence about that. The game has been continously dumbed down for the past months, yet player numbers keep decreasing. And what I'm afraid of is that the dev team will dumb the game down and alienate their veteran playerbase with no one taking their place simply because NS2 doesn't offer gameplay that interests the masses.
I'm sure this will produce the cool-tempered responses you want
Isn't this what people are asking for
Sacrificing skill ceiling does not work.
Too complex of a game to make it easier to learn?! That is an awful excuse! Watch this:
This is EXACTLY the kind of tutorials that should have been being worked on, not the watering down which we have been provided since the pdt took over. Just as the cdt trumped uwe in development, there's more useful and ACTUALLY applicable game knowledge in that one short scenario tutorial made by a group of dedicated and unpaid community members than in the revamped tutorials the pdt has put forward. You can't seriously believe that the tutorials in game are even close to comprehensive or good enough, especially when tutorials like that exist. You guys can do so much better.
Playtesters, developers, you guys should feel EMBARRASSED for the state you have brought the game to. None of you are able to put your own agendas or egos aside to take any sort of criticism constructively, consider what the overwhelming majority of the once existing player base was telling you guys. You all act like you can do no wrong, like you've got it all figured out, like YOUR ideas and answers for the game are the only ones worth a damn. You cannot even start to accuse ppl of wanting to stroke their own egos when that is essentially all you pts/devs do. Your ideas are best, there's no reasoning with the rest of the benighted community, so forget em - they just have to deal with it. Your way or the highway. It is total bs.
Its been ridiculous since pdt took over and is now looking to be beyond hope.
Sure, maybe there's no downside to making a game easier... when its in early development or beta! Not when the game has been officially out for nearly 4 years! At this point, your question about wondering what the downside of making it easier to play is like asking a triple-a baseball team why they don't wanna go back to playing coach pitch or t-ball. They wanted the big leagues, not to see their game neutered! Will they hit the ball more? Yes. Will they feel like they have accomplished anything, like their skill is being made full use of, their precision and training had paid off? Absolutely not!
You've taken away our sharp, pointy scissors (we're adults after all, ns2 is not a children's game like subnautica), and given us dull, rounded-tip Fiskars (the kind you learn to cut paper with in pre-school), and then can't understand why people hate the change.
Please, politely remove your heads from one another's bums, and take a step back. You have dismantled several large communities, ignored the feedback of many many many many many many people who know the game intrinsically well, and refuse to acknowledge the damage that has been done in the process. Yes, your farts stink. Please take a dose of community-driven bean-o, several helpings of humble pie, and consider making ns2 great again.
On a final note, i want to call on @IronHorse specifically and say that i recognize its not fair to make it seem like all this is frustration is directed at you personally. You are probably the most active here on the forums and i think you often get undeserved flak because of it. In fact i hope that no dev or pt take this as a personal attack. Despite my extreme disappointment with where the game currently is, i still appreciate the fact that anybody has done anything for this game since uwe's abandonment and i respect you as individuals. But seriously, please please please let this be a wake-up call to you all that you have undone the effort the cdt originally put forth when it first started to resuscitate ns2. You have achieved the total opposite.
Increasing the size of the hitboxes is not a fix, and it is embarrassing this was presented as one.
Rookies play on rookie only servers, where the oh so evil (sarcasm) veterans can't get to them. The skill gap is a big problem in NS2, but it is not the root cause of poor player retention. So what is?
If due to some amazing alien team play or incredibly deerpy Marines (or sometimes both) the aliens maintain 2 res nodes outside of base, the balance seems to swing the other way once fades pop, and even more so after onos are up.
If hit boxes must be oversized for some reason that I don't understand have you considered going back to the old skulk hotboxes and shrinking the skulk model slightly? That way skulks are as easy to hit as they were before and they still have an oversized hitbox. Other hit boxes for the higher life forms don't seem to be too bad, so you could leave those as-is.
This combined with the implemented better bite radius (which makes up close and personal skulks much more dangerous) may make early alien game play exciting and fun again, even when your team is out matched.....
This also has the plus of not needing to tweak skulk HP/Armor to try to balance everything out.....