Build 327 - UNEARTHED - Natural Selection 2
System
Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Join Date: 2013-01-29 Member: 182599Members, Super Administrators, Reinforced - Diamond
Build 327 - UNEARTHED - Natural Selection 2
newly released update to Natural Selection 2, UNEARTHED. including balance changes, content updates and improvements to the stability of the game.
Comments
The goal with this is two fold: First, to provide a better gameplay experience with the new balance changes, as we feel both game and map balance are improved with these numbers. Secondly, it will by proxy reduce stress on servers and net performance gains and a smoother experience for all players."
So basically fluff as we know reason #2 is complete BS and reason #1 is logically impossible as lower player count results in a more competitive game not less.
Other than that very excited to play with all the new changes! Thanks for all the work that goes into these updates!!!!
In 2019, with all the perf improvements to NS2, it is.
I dont think they are going for "less competitive", rather than "more balanced". Which I kind of understand and support. Im against decreasing player limit, but if that makes the balancing issue easier for UWE (which it should), than it's understandable they go down that road. Just don't bullshit!
Anywho, thank you for the update!
I looked forward to many of these changes!
Increased size : More consistent hit registration!
Decreased size : More accurately reflects the model!
Rinse and repeat.
By the way, is there a legend for the new status icons?
The only hitbox related entry i found in the changelog:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Who the hell SLICES with an AXE?
The new animation (the one you reverted from) felt so much better
edit: Except I just crashed leaving my listening server >:I
edit2: I am rotating eternal
edit3: Aaaaand crashed again. Best content but buggiest build yet?
They could open up hive so you can host your own and point your server to it. Thus you can still run 24 slot servers that are "unranked" while still having local ranks for that server which do not effect their data. Or they could just toss all the "unranked" server data into a separate db table so that there is still ranking for "unranked" but this way those servers still can do things like shuffle and prevent pub stomps.
Or if it really is about balance and it really is about 10v10 then why not create a carve out for reserved slots and allow a server to be 11v11 in rare cases. Is there balance so bad that having 1 more player on each team in rare cases ruins the game? You could say the same about 2 more players but I am just trying to point out the issue with reserved slots.
At the end of the day we all know that the real advantage of higher player slots on a server is about 2 things. 1, increasing the odds there is a player on each team that will command. 2, decreasing the odds of the server entering a death spiral and needing to be reseeded from too many players leaving at one time. #2 is sort of where the preference for 24 player slots came about as half the server could leave and you still have 12 players which is enough for a decent game.
Either way if the intent is that the game is intended for 10v10 games then we should really allow 10v10 with reserved slots so that normally the game is 10v10 and in those rare cases when there is a reserved slot player the game is 11v10 or 11v11. These are edge cases and are not going to have a real impact on the balance of the entire game. They do have a real impact on server operators who need to be able to promote reserved slot subscriptions to raise money to pay for the servers.
Seems like a pretty clear increase in surface area to me.
Anyway, some quick questions. *I have cheats and alltech on
The shade passive doesn't seem that useful to me. Drifters are kind of visible which seems fair, while cysts are completely invisible from distance but infestation is visible and the cysts appear when you go near them. I guess the only benefit is that you can't shoot them from a distance?
The crag passive doesn't apply retrospectively to the older cysts. Is that intended?
Tunnel relocation is 6 tres, but 8pres in the patch notes.
My gorge tunnels have different hp and armour at full maturity. Did I miss something in the patch notes? Also, they don't grow to the upgraded hp and have to be healed. Is that intended?
Can we have the old alien hud back in NS2+ please. I don't see why you had to remove them entirely instead of switching the default around. These are too loud for me.
* Infestation should no longer “streak” and appears more crisp than before.
* Map Decals no longer streak
1) Why remove the little parasite circle that lets you know you're parasited/how long it will last??? I made an offhand comment about it being gone and got nothing but agreement in return about how much that sucks.
2) Speaking of parasite, I thought there was going to be a way to remove parasite at the armory (the 327 beta server had that when I tried it) I was super psyched for this!
3) What happened to two IP's for marine no matter what? I thought we were FINALLY going to be done with extra resets and waiting for that one more player on Marine. This really needs to be implemented!
Unearthed is an awesome map (please people just give it a try!)
The HMG model looks sick!
The new hiveskill badges are much better looking.
I dare to ask a question about hiveskill...
Do we actually have seperate hiveskills for each team now? Will I start to show as a lower tier when I join Marine and a higher tier when I join Alien (after it gathers enough data obviously)
If not is that something that's on the way (as people who claim to be "in the know" keep saying) or is it just never going to happen. (talking about an actual seperate number for each team - ie can I show on the scoreboard as a 1200 tier 2 on Marine and 2500 tier 5 on Alien)
3) You don't need to reset or wait anymore! An additional Infantry Portal automatically spawns whenever more players arrive on the team, not just at the round start anymore, but at any point in a round. (Credit goes to @Nintendows !)
Hope that answers some questions
So a Marine team at 8 players, a 9th joins and a fully built IP just spawns? That works.. just need to communicate that to people so they stop calling reset votes now. lol
Aliens have to actually pay attention now, if they want to win
Just focus on killing cysts and tunnels. GL rush once they're researched and ez win. (And I suck at marine)
It's just stupid how fast a hive can die to just a couple GL marines. The last game I played the Marines rushed a hive with only half the team and the hive went from full health to dead in like 1/4 of a second.
Yesterday most of the players had to be repeatedly reminded about the changes, including me
In theory, GLs are nigh harmless now against lifeforms, and without support should die to a single skulk.
Rather than have a separate button for each end of the tunnel there should just be 1 button that makes a new end.
The button has 3 states:
1) Default (no ends drooped)
2) Half (one end dropped)
3) Full (both ends dropped)
This way all a user needs to do is click the button once and drop and end and then click the same button again to drop the other end. When an end is destroyed the button goes from the full state to the half state and the user can now place a new end. When the button is in the full state it will select the first end that was dropped and if that end is already selected it will select the next end.
I would also suggest that the 3 states of the button be very clear so that a user can see at a glance which of the 3 states it is in.
This will make it much easier for users to place a tunnel.
Right now the menu can be overwhelming to new users and in the heat of battle it is difficult to determine quickly if it was a tunnel end or entrance that I need to replace. I do not care if it is an entrance or an exit I just want to place whatever the missing end is. Going from 2 separate buttons down to 1 greatly simplifies this.
Current Example:
|--2 states--||--2 states--||--2 states--||--2 states--|
|--2 states--||--2 states--||--2 states--||--2 states--|
Currently the user needs to manage 4-32 possible states that the menu could be in.
Proposed Example:
|--3 states--||--3 states--||--3 states--||--3 states--|
Under the proposed change the user needs to manage 3-12 possible states the menu could be in.
By reducing the amount of possible states the menu could be in it will be both more friendly to new users and it will offer users a faster means to execute what they want.
Also not sure if this is in there now but just want to say just in case. If you select a tunnel that does not have another end dropped there should be a button to drop the other end right from that screen. This makes it a lot easier for a user to logically go oh I want to place the other end to "this" tunnel.
Interesting idea of simplifying it, but I am not sure what you mean by a "Half state"?
Do you mean fill in the icon only halfway? If so, what is the default state, because it cannot be grayed out (that means unusable), and a full icon is being suggested for both deployed?
Additionally, consider that having the ability to manage individual tunnels and exits through a button allow you to quickly relocate or infest an exit or an entrance by clicking on that button.
Having a "drop only" button could not accomplish this. Meaning, if I wanted to relocate either side, i'd have to remember which tunnel it was on the map and select it manually, instead of using the interface or hotkeys.
A brief history on the tunnel UI:
Namely, contextual scenarios.
Imagine for instance you have two hives and thus two pairs of tunnels, and two exits get killed.
Pressing the Tunnel Button does what in this instance? Only replace the first one? What if you only wanted the 2nd exit put up?
Essentially you lose control, so in order to address this we required you having to click individual tunnels to then drop it's paired end.
But then this created a scenario where a commander Dropped a tunnel -> clicked the button again to drop the exit, and received an onscreen error because that button was only for a NEW tunnel pair. Put simply: players did not understand (rightly so) that you had to click individual tunnels in order to create their paired side, as its a behavior found no where else in the game.
Thus, the solution was to create a sub menu so that its intuitive and is like every other mechanic in the game. There is no confusion which tunnel (1st hive, 2nd hive, etc) you are dropping or replacing.
In short: After months of different approaches this is actually the best method to ensure commander choice, control, intuitive usability and clarity.
Perhaps at the cost of being overwhelming to new players at first, but we felt that it was easy enough to adapt to.
1) Default: |--Image of Unopen Tunnel--|
2) Half: |--Small Image of Unopen Tunnel / X--|
3) Full: |--Small Image of Open Tunnel / Small image of Open Tunnel--|
The key is to make the 3 images clear to the user so at a glance you can tell instantly they are different. In this case a large image of a tunnel entrance lets you know that nothing has been dropped yet. The image of a small tunnel, a slash, and a X lets the user know at a glance they are missing the other end and pressing the button will fill in the missing X resulting in the full image where you see two small images of two open tunnels.
Ideally I would say to make the 3 states different colors but I am assuming that is not allowed.
As for your question on quickly relocating the tunnels:
I honestly feel that once the tunnel is dropped all management of a dropped structure should be preformed at that structure. This is consistent with all other alien and even marine structures. There is no expectation of clicking something in the commander UI that should be doing something like this anyway. There is a lot of structures in NS2 that have things managed directly on the structure. It is also natural for the alien com to move structures around and that action has always been performed directly at the structure. However, as per my previous suggestion you could if you want maintain some of the current ability to select a tunnel by pressing the button when it is in the "full" state. Such an action would cycle though the two different ends of the tunnel. This button action could also be useful for a commander to quickly verify which tunnel ends are currently assigned to a particular slot.
Also I want to add that the post that you quoted is completely correct in that you do indeed need a separate button for each tunnel in order to properly manage them. I am not suggesting changing that.
With my really crappy image you get the idea.
Here is another one with the X type design I talked about at first.
Obviously you can come up with your own design idea that is better that some shit I can do in paint but the point is to help express the idea.
Another option could be to even just have all 4 buttons on the first tab and move the 3 commands (heal here, expand here etc to another tab) (honestly does anyone ever use those things)
The only problem I could see here is having to pan from one tunnel spot to the other, but you'd have to test how much of an issue that actually is.
The problem with this is that you then need to be able to build both ends at the same time. If it worked like you are describing it would be really bad for aliens.