But there are points that need complaining; for example the ludicrous GL damage and arbitrary limitation of max players.
The GL damage is too high yes.
The max player count is not an arbitrary change. Go play Overwatch 12 vs 12... oh wait, you can't, because (like ns2) it was designed as a 6 vs 6 game and (unlike ns2) has no higher playercount servers. NS2 was never designed to be played at higher playercounts, hence the large servers being relegated to the arcade tab... the fact that the playercount wasn't reduced to 8 vs 8 or lower is just a demonstration that UWE accepts that some people enjoy larger playercounts and came to a compromise.
There is no private servers in overwatch and it is a completely different game. This game could barely even run at 6v6 when it came out.
The reality is that the game has been 24 player count for years. Lowering the amount of players on each team from 12 to 10 is not going to have a significant effect on balance but it does have a significant impact on keeping servers populated.
Nothing was stopping these lower player count servers from being run. However, taking away hive does stop higher payer count servers other than really really high player count servers from being run because they will turn into a pub stomp if there is no ranking system.
Nothing was stopping these lower player count servers from being run.
Incorrect. The tragedy of the commons phenomenon created by large servers makes it unrealistic to run 8v8 servers unless every server is 8v8.
The nature of the game makes it un realistic as there is not players to keep a server populated. You have created a condition where there is dramatically more seading games now and much less full games for people to enjoy.
Before even if half the server left after a game which can happen when games last 20-40min. you still have 12 players which is enough for a basic seeding game.
Instead your now often left with just 9 or 10 players, just below the threshold and so those last 9-10 players tend to just leave and not play the game at all.
If they stay they need to wait up to an hour to repopulate the server to then be able to play a 20-40min game that causes the cycle to repeat.
The only time this does not occur if your lucky enough to just have multiple people sitting in the spec slots filling the player slots the second the become available. So you manage to accomplish the same thing of having more player slots just with the side effect of less people playing the actual game.
So this is where we are now, promoting server slots that allow you to play the game at some point in the future rather than play it right now. I would rather have 4 more actual players in the server like I had before than 4 players sitting in spectate hoping to get in.
Instead of having a near solid line when full as the server is able to maintain player count and quickly recover from players leaving now server player count is dramatically more unstable.
Where before you had more games that were full games and you could argue easier to balance for, the increased number of seeding games leads to a condition where the amount of players on the server is more often a fluid value where games can be heavily impacted by late joining players.
I don't think you understand what I am saying at all. You are describing exactly why 12v12 and lots of spectator slots create a tragedy of the commons.
I don't think you understand what I am saying at all. You are describing exactly why 12v12 and lots of spectator slots create a tragedy of the commons.
I dont think 12v12 is a problem. From my experience, it resulted in more successive rounds at a given night.
More than 4 spect slots are a bit silly though.
EDIT:
What bothers me is that we can't really separate the cause for fewer rounds.
The game dynamics changed a lot. There are players who hate the new tunnel system, and that might be reason.
Or it might be that 10v10 is just under the threshold of providing a continuous rotation of players.
It would've been better if the patch came out without the player slot limitation.
I don't think you understand what I am saying at all. You are describing exactly why 12v12 and lots of spectator slots create a tragedy of the commons.
I dont think 12v12 is a problem. From my experience, it resulted in more successive rounds at a given night.
More than 4 spect slots are a bit silly though.
EDIT:
What bothers me is that we can't really separate the cause for fewer rounds.
The game dynamics changed a lot. There are players who hate the new tunnel system, and that might be reason.
Or it might be that 10v10 is just under the threshold of providing a continuous rotation of players.
It would've been better if the patch came out without the player slot limitation.
Especially given that lowering it to 10v10 is not making anyone happy.
The people that think this game is supposed to be competitive only and want 6v6 are not happy and the people that just want to run and play pub servers are not happy.
At least with the previous player counts half of them (well way more than half because there is significantly more people who play this game in a pub vs competitively) were happy.
Look I don’t know anything about balance, player counts or the morality of abortion, but it seems they added the music stingers back in at the start of the rounds HELL YEAH
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
And there's multiple varying audio tracks now, and they don't play long enough to interfere with gameplay in a round, and the danger music of when a chair or hive gets low only plays on the last one, and it's no longer ear deafening..
It's a great change imo and gets me pumped for every round I play! (instead of the depressing single track that played before)
And there's multiple varying audio tracks now, and they don't play long enough to interfere with gameplay in a round, and the danger music of when a chair or hive gets low only plays on the last one, and it's no longer ear deafening..
It's a great change imo and gets me pumped for every round I play! (instead of the depressing single track that played before)
Oh good to know, going to turn the volume back up to hear it now!
Coming back to this game after many months, I've noticed that rookie commanders are learning much more quickly and a few more veterans willing to teach. I attribute this to the tutorials that were made awhile back. They are definitely paying dividends in regards to raising the skill floor. The community seems more willing to shout down those who complain far too much as well. Great patch. Next step is to lower the player counts to 9v9.
NS fan for 10+ years, and my main point here is taking away gorge tunnel makes playing alien way less fun and exciting and nothing to talk about on alien team except where the rines are at and harvesters and hive drops its so BORING! .. and with only 10v10 and less rines on a team they having a hard time winning because they have to actively build every structure and they cant keep up plus its more fun with 12v12 or 11v11 IMO
This one thing probably will kill this game and 12v12 was fun why are the devs so worried about peoples rank being exact instead of their games being fun.. IMO just reducing gorge tunnel health would've been a great balance fix..
Game just isnt as fun anymore.. most likely I wont be playing anymore and I see a lot of other people not playing anymore the game is way less exciting without tunnels and 12v12!
#change it back give us what we want not what u think going to fix ranks and be fun it was already a blast to play!!!!
After all these years of having gorge tunnel and 12v12 suddenly you want to take it away where is the logic in that, the game was great already if you want more players advertise more or something because nobody I've talked to about it ever heard of NS.. If you had realistic graphics like the other games it probably would be poppin in the NS servers..
You make NS2 but make it exactly like NS1 and really the only new thing you've added is taking away structures for gorges and now taking away large servers.. Stop taking away and start adding if your going to do anything.. This kind of Backpedaling on what you have has killed the joy of playing this for me.. You’ve reduced backpedeling for rines now reduce backpedaling on what NS is !!!
NS is great because its different and more strategic then other shooters it doesn’t need to have things harshly taken away its already good and you can try out new things to make it more balanced.. Add marine sniper rifles, magnum pistols, RC drones, and weapon mods like fast mags and infrared scopes, remote c4, active camouflage, tracking darts, and be able to ride gorges and onos
It'd be cool if you had customizable marines where you had a style and individual tech to choose and customize and a character bio with more voiceovers then just everybody sounding and looking the same
Thx for the cool game maybe split the game into ranked and classic so we can have one to have fun and one to have a bunch of restrictions forced on us like 10v10 only. Also a bit laggy on new unearthed on my medium spec laptop. Thanks
I have to agree that they took the wrong track nerfing tunnels instead of buffing marines/giving them new tools to counter.
Gorge is less fun to play, and what little enjoyment I could eek out of being a marine is gone (no more hunting for Gorges dropping tunnels)
Bile mine seems utterly useless (babbler mine was so great!!) Hydras rarely hit the target and take too much energy to drop. Babblers take way waaay too long to spawn on you. Not having to spend res is nice, but Gorge is boring to play now
On the flip side Gorges being faster makes them virtually impossible for me to kill whereas before I could kill them roughly 50% of the time.
There are things to love about this build (especially the new hmg - I can actually do some dmg with it) but overall balance feels off with games lasting too long only to suddenly end in a series of marine pushes that either succeed way to easy, or fail due to aliens being able to repeatedly drop new hives.
Edit: how on earth is this off topic? Discussing 327 in the 327 thread seems pretty on topic to me?
I have to agree that they took the wrong track nerfing tunnels instead of buffing marines/giving them new tools to counter.
Gorge is less fun to play, and what little enjoyment I could eek out of being a marine is gone (no more hunting for Gorges dropping tunnels)
Bile mine seems utterly useless (babbler mine was so great!!)
Disagree. Gorge is fundamentally the same as before but buffed. If you do not like gorging now then you may have never liked playing gorge. I will agree i feel the bile mine is pretty useless. I got hit with one the last time i played and was confused as to why it felt like nothing happened.
NS fan for 10+ years, and my main point here is taking away gorge tunnel makes playing alien way less fun and exciting and nothing to talk about on alien team except where the rines are at and harvesters and hive drops its so BORING! .. and with only 10v10 and less rines on a team they having a hard time winning because they have to actively build every structure and they cant keep up plus its more fun with 12v12 or 11v11 IMO
This one thing probably will kill this game and 12v12 was fun why are the devs so worried about peoples rank being exact instead of their games being fun.. IMO just reducing gorge tunnel health would've been a great balance fix..
Game just isnt as fun anymore.. most likely I wont be playing anymore and I see a lot of other people not playing anymore the game is way less exciting without tunnels and 12v12!
#change it back give us what we want not what u think going to fix ranks and be fun it was already a blast to play!!!!
After all these years of having gorge tunnel and 12v12 suddenly you want to take it away where is the logic in that, the game was great already if you want more players advertise more or something because nobody I've talked to about it ever heard of NS.. If you had realistic graphics like the other games it probably would be poppin in the NS servers..
You make NS2 but make it exactly like NS1 and really the only new thing you've added is taking away structures for gorges and now taking away large servers.. Stop taking away and start adding if your going to do anything.. This kind of Backpedaling on what you have has killed the joy of playing this for me.. You’ve reduced backpedeling for rines now reduce backpedaling on what NS is !!!
NS is great because its different and more strategic then other shooters it doesn’t need to have things harshly taken away its already good and you can try out new things to make it more balanced.. Add marine sniper rifles, magnum pistols, RC drones, and weapon mods like fast mags and infrared scopes, remote c4, active camouflage, tracking darts, and be able to ride gorges and onos
It'd be cool if you had customizable marines where you had a style and individual tech to choose and customize and a character bio with more voiceovers then just everybody sounding and looking the same
Thx for the cool game maybe split the game into ranked and classic so we can have one to have fun and one to have a bunch of restrictions forced on us like 10v10 only. Also a bit laggy on new unearthed on my medium spec laptop. Thanks
Disagree with literally everything except the last sentence. Server ops can run servers with more than 20 players, it would just be in arcade. If you played Ns2 seriously at any point in time you would realize how RANKED servers need to have less players. Any more than current numbers just wrecks game mechanics and player roles. However I would also argue less players than 16-20 gets boring, at least for me. That is why i like how servers are doing ranges of 8 to 10 players per team which gives everyone the ability to choose the game that has the right amount of players for them.
I have to agree that they took the wrong track nerfing tunnels instead of buffing marines/giving them new tools to counter.
Gorge is less fun to play, and what little enjoyment I could eek out of being a marine is gone (no more hunting for Gorges dropping tunnels)
Bile mine seems utterly useless (babbler mine was so great!!)
Disagree. Gorge is fundamentally the same as before but buffed. If you do not like gorging now then you may have never liked playing gorge. I will agree i feel the bile mine is pretty useless. I got hit with one the last time i played and was confused as to why it felt like nothing happened.
NS fan for 10+ years, and my main point here is taking away gorge tunnel makes playing alien way less fun and exciting and nothing to talk about on alien team except where the rines are at and harvesters and hive drops its so BORING! .. and with only 10v10 and less rines on a team they having a hard time winning because they have to actively build every structure and they cant keep up plus its more fun with 12v12 or 11v11 IMO
This one thing probably will kill this game and 12v12 was fun why are the devs so worried about peoples rank being exact instead of their games being fun.. IMO just reducing gorge tunnel health would've been a great balance fix..
Game just isnt as fun anymore.. most likely I wont be playing anymore and I see a lot of other people not playing anymore the game is way less exciting without tunnels and 12v12!
#change it back give us what we want not what u think going to fix ranks and be fun it was already a blast to play!!!!
After all these years of having gorge tunnel and 12v12 suddenly you want to take it away where is the logic in that, the game was great already if you want more players advertise more or something because nobody I've talked to about it ever heard of NS.. If you had realistic graphics like the other games it probably would be poppin in the NS servers..
You make NS2 but make it exactly like NS1 and really the only new thing you've added is taking away structures for gorges and now taking away large servers.. Stop taking away and start adding if your going to do anything.. This kind of Backpedaling on what you have has killed the joy of playing this for me.. You’ve reduced backpedeling for rines now reduce backpedaling on what NS is !!!
NS is great because its different and more strategic then other shooters it doesn’t need to have things harshly taken away its already good and you can try out new things to make it more balanced.. Add marine sniper rifles, magnum pistols, RC drones, and weapon mods like fast mags and infrared scopes, remote c4, active camouflage, tracking darts, and be able to ride gorges and onos
It'd be cool if you had customizable marines where you had a style and individual tech to choose and customize and a character bio with more voiceovers then just everybody sounding and looking the same
Thx for the cool game maybe split the game into ranked and classic so we can have one to have fun and one to have a bunch of restrictions forced on us like 10v10 only. Also a bit laggy on new unearthed on my medium spec laptop. Thanks
Disagree with literally everything except the last sentence. Server ops can run servers with more than 20 players, it would just be in arcade. If you played Ns2 seriously at any point in time you would realize how RANKED servers need to have less players. Any more than current numbers just wrecks game mechanics and player roles. However I would also argue less players than 16-20 gets boring, at least for me. That is why i like how servers are doing ranges of 8 to 10 players per team which gives everyone the ability to choose the game that has the right amount of players for them.
Wrong, server ops can NOT run servers with more than 20 slots.
It will not be "simply arcade" what it would be is simply a disaster filled with unstoppable pub stompers.
Going from 20 players to 22-24 is not anywhere remotely close to suddenly having 30-40+ players.
Without access to the hive ranking and a way for players on the server to rank up it is impossible to have balanced games on lower player count servers.
You do not see this as a problem in really high player count servers because at that point there is so many players it is not going to matter.
This could be solved if they allowed hive to still work on the 21-24 player count servers.
Part of the problem is the whole ranked vs unranked mentality. As if it has to be one or the other.
I saw the same thing happening back in the days of CoD's decline... "ranked" included all the leveling, prestige, etc and was forced matchmaking... "unranked" had no leveling, no prestige, but included necessities for a decent game (ie server browser, community owned servers)
There was no reason whatsoever for them to take leveling and prestige away from "unranked" (as opposed to just having two databases, one ranked one unranked) just as there's no reason for UWE dev's to block hive on the "unranked" 22 player servers... just have two databases for each "ranked" and "arcade"
Example: Say you join a "ranked" 16 player server (8v8) and are a tier 4 1700 hiveskill... You join an "arcade" 24 player server and are a tier 6 with 2600 hiveskill.
There's no reason to harm/punish a portion of your playerbase.
Unfortunately, it is one or the other. Broken record playing again, seeding is hard.
Fracturing the community will likely result in both sides failing harder at getting a server seeded. Best case scenario is that we maintain the 24 player servers because again, seeding is hard, high player counts, high spec counts are better at surviving but that defeats the purpose of lowering the player count. Allowing larger player counts to be separately viable will only accelerate the game's decline. If you can't seed, people will stop coming and that is it.
There's no reason to harm/punish a portion of your playerbase.
Oh, they are not harming us, they are harming themselves.
There are plenty of other games to play with, instead of waiting on a server for 1 hour to seed, then play 2 rounds before the server dies again.
Or just to wait in the server browser for a slot to open up on one of the populated (and performant) servers.
But i'm sure it was worth it, i would just love to know the real reason.
Unfortunately, it is one or the other. Broken record playing again, seeding is hard.
Fracturing the community will likely result in both sides failing harder at getting a server seeded. Best case scenario is that we maintain the 24 player servers because again, seeding is hard, high player counts, high spec counts are better at surviving but that defeats the purpose of lowering the player count. Allowing larger player counts to be separately viable will only accelerate the game's decline. If you can't seed, people will stop coming and that is it.
Except the community is already "fractured" isn't it. There are already 22-24 player servers populating, not to mention ns2large.
Literally all this would do is allow the entire community to function with hiveskill/shuffle instead of only a portion of the community.
With hiveskill and shuffle restricted all they're doing is punishing people who prefer 11v11 and up in an attempt to force them into 10v10 or less...
Quick play and the "ranked" server tab could still be 10v10 (or 8v8 rather) only while anything higher is in the "arcade" tab. That prevents higher playercount servers from siphoning off new unsuspecting players.
Except the community is already "fractured" isn't it. There are already 22-24 player servers populating, not to mention ns2large.
Quick play and the "ranked" server tab could still be 10v10 (or 8v8 rather) only while anything higher is in the "arcade" tab. That prevents higher playercount servers from siphoning off new unsuspecting players.
Yes, it is. No reason to make it worse.
Siphoning isn't the problem here. Making things easier for one is also simultaneously making things harder for the other. And I think that facilitating higher player counts while forcing lower player counts makes things worse for both sides.
Literally all this would do is allow the entire community to function with hiveskill/shuffle instead of only a portion of the community.
With hiveskill and shuffle restricted all they're doing is punishing people who prefer 11v11 and up in an attempt to force them into 10v10 or less...
It isn't even a big deal unless someone has a massive skill change. Since you aren't going for new players, why do you care? To make things a tiny bit harder for smurfs?
You can still shuffle can't you? It just isn't up to date, which isn't a big problem outside of smurfs, who would be able to get around it by making another smurf anyway.
Endorsing a different mode makes things worse because you are splitting the available pool of players. At the most extreme end, you would require double the amount of players to get servers seeded. That is unlikely as quick play will direct players to official player counts plus players might not care either way, but splitting any amount of players is not a good idea when we already have so few.
You can still shuffle can't you? It just isn't up to date, which isn't a big problem outside of smurfs, who would be able to get around it by making another smurf anyway.
Endorsing a different mode makes things worse because you are splitting the available pool of players. At the most extreme end, you would require double the amount of players to get servers seeded. That is unlikely as quick play will direct players to official player counts plus players might not care either way, but splitting any amount of players is not a good idea when we already have so few.
They aren't "endorsing" it unless it's linked to quick play and in the ranked tab.
Also it not being up to date is a much bigger deal than you realize, especially since they're supposedly working on separate scores for each team. (Which would dramatically improve shuffles)
It's sabotaging certain servers in an attempt to force people out of them, and there's never any reason for that.
You can still shuffle can't you? It just isn't up to date, which isn't a big problem outside of smurfs, who would be able to get around it by making another smurf anyway.
Endorsing a different mode makes things worse because you are splitting the available pool of players. At the most extreme end, you would require double the amount of players to get servers seeded. That is unlikely as quick play will direct players to official player counts plus players might not care either way, but splitting any amount of players is not a good idea when we already have so few.
They aren't "endorsing" it unless it's linked to quick play and in the ranked tab.
Also it not being up to date is a much bigger deal than you realize, especially since they're supposedly working on separate scores for each team. (Which would dramatically improve shuffles)
It's sabotaging certain servers in an attempt to force people out of them, and there's never any reason for that.
Maintaining a separate database for a separate player count isn't endorsing it? Hahahahahaha.
And people's hive scores don't change that much or drastically, so it doesn't matter if you aren't going for "unsuspecting new players". Even if a couple of them do improve, well, the appeal of larger servers is that an individual's output is diluted. So what is the big deal? Separate scores? I'll believe it when I see it, but the data collection supposedly started awhile ago, so it isn't an issue there either.
And people's hive scores don't change that much or drastically, so it doesn't matter if you aren't going for "unsuspecting new players". Even if a couple of them do improve, well, the appeal of larger servers is that an individual's output is diluted.
By that argument, why fret over hiveskill at all in the first place? 90% of the playerbase is stable.
That reasoning is nonsensical....
And people's hive scores don't change that much or drastically, so it doesn't matter if you aren't going for "unsuspecting new players". Even if a couple of them do improve, well, the appeal of larger servers is that an individual's output is diluted.
By that argument, why fret over hiveskill at all in the first place? 90% of the playerbase is stable.
That reasoning is nonsensical....
For new players and vanity. It has very little to do with balance at this point in the game.
For new players and vanity. It has very little to do with balance at this point in the game.
You cant just ignore the small but existing influx of new players.
Most of them had been gaming for decades, and will hand you your kharaa arse as a marine.
All it takes is for them to prefer the arcade tab - where his ranking will never change - and he can single-handedly mess up all the rounds.
Maybe that IS the plan in the long run, so UWE can kill off the arcade tab.
But i dont think that half of the playerbase would migrate to ranked, 10v10 servers.
Comments
There is no private servers in overwatch and it is a completely different game. This game could barely even run at 6v6 when it came out.
The reality is that the game has been 24 player count for years. Lowering the amount of players on each team from 12 to 10 is not going to have a significant effect on balance but it does have a significant impact on keeping servers populated.
Nothing was stopping these lower player count servers from being run. However, taking away hive does stop higher payer count servers other than really really high player count servers from being run because they will turn into a pub stomp if there is no ranking system.
Before even if half the server left after a game which can happen when games last 20-40min. you still have 12 players which is enough for a basic seeding game.
Instead your now often left with just 9 or 10 players, just below the threshold and so those last 9-10 players tend to just leave and not play the game at all.
If they stay they need to wait up to an hour to repopulate the server to then be able to play a 20-40min game that causes the cycle to repeat.
The only time this does not occur if your lucky enough to just have multiple people sitting in the spec slots filling the player slots the second the become available. So you manage to accomplish the same thing of having more player slots just with the side effect of less people playing the actual game.
So this is where we are now, promoting server slots that allow you to play the game at some point in the future rather than play it right now. I would rather have 4 more actual players in the server like I had before than 4 players sitting in spectate hoping to get in.
Instead of having a near solid line when full as the server is able to maintain player count and quickly recover from players leaving now server player count is dramatically more unstable.
Where before you had more games that were full games and you could argue easier to balance for, the increased number of seeding games leads to a condition where the amount of players on the server is more often a fluid value where games can be heavily impacted by late joining players.
I dont think 12v12 is a problem. From my experience, it resulted in more successive rounds at a given night.
More than 4 spect slots are a bit silly though.
EDIT:
What bothers me is that we can't really separate the cause for fewer rounds.
The game dynamics changed a lot. There are players who hate the new tunnel system, and that might be reason.
Or it might be that 10v10 is just under the threshold of providing a continuous rotation of players.
It would've been better if the patch came out without the player slot limitation.
There WERE 8v8 servers, like Survival of the Fattest, and it was populated by a specific group of people, who enjoyed 8v8 more than 12v12.
(Sorry for double-posting)
Especially given that lowering it to 10v10 is not making anyone happy.
The people that think this game is supposed to be competitive only and want 6v6 are not happy and the people that just want to run and play pub servers are not happy.
At least with the previous player counts half of them (well way more than half because there is significantly more people who play this game in a pub vs competitively) were happy.
It's a great change imo and gets me pumped for every round I play! (instead of the depressing single track that played before)
Oh good to know, going to turn the volume back up to hear it now!
This one thing probably will kill this game and 12v12 was fun why are the devs so worried about peoples rank being exact instead of their games being fun.. IMO just reducing gorge tunnel health would've been a great balance fix..
Game just isnt as fun anymore.. most likely I wont be playing anymore and I see a lot of other people not playing anymore the game is way less exciting without tunnels and 12v12!
#change it back give us what we want not what u think going to fix ranks and be fun it was already a blast to play!!!!
After all these years of having gorge tunnel and 12v12 suddenly you want to take it away where is the logic in that, the game was great already if you want more players advertise more or something because nobody I've talked to about it ever heard of NS.. If you had realistic graphics like the other games it probably would be poppin in the NS servers..
You make NS2 but make it exactly like NS1 and really the only new thing you've added is taking away structures for gorges and now taking away large servers.. Stop taking away and start adding if your going to do anything.. This kind of Backpedaling on what you have has killed the joy of playing this for me.. You’ve reduced backpedeling for rines now reduce backpedaling on what NS is !!!
NS is great because its different and more strategic then other shooters it doesn’t need to have things harshly taken away its already good and you can try out new things to make it more balanced.. Add marine sniper rifles, magnum pistols, RC drones, and weapon mods like fast mags and infrared scopes, remote c4, active camouflage, tracking darts, and be able to ride gorges and onos
It'd be cool if you had customizable marines where you had a style and individual tech to choose and customize and a character bio with more voiceovers then just everybody sounding and looking the same
Thx for the cool game maybe split the game into ranked and classic so we can have one to have fun and one to have a bunch of restrictions forced on us like 10v10 only. Also a bit laggy on new unearthed on my medium spec laptop. Thanks
You could say that in every multiplayer game and players would agree. The NS2 devs and mappers don't do anything exceptionally worse than anyone else.
Gorge is less fun to play, and what little enjoyment I could eek out of being a marine is gone (no more hunting for Gorges dropping tunnels)
Bile mine seems utterly useless (babbler mine was so great!!) Hydras rarely hit the target and take too much energy to drop. Babblers take way waaay too long to spawn on you. Not having to spend res is nice, but Gorge is boring to play now
On the flip side Gorges being faster makes them virtually impossible for me to kill whereas before I could kill them roughly 50% of the time.
There are things to love about this build (especially the new hmg - I can actually do some dmg with it) but overall balance feels off with games lasting too long only to suddenly end in a series of marine pushes that either succeed way to easy, or fail due to aliens being able to repeatedly drop new hives.
Edit: how on earth is this off topic? Discussing 327 in the 327 thread seems pretty on topic to me?
Disagree. Gorge is fundamentally the same as before but buffed. If you do not like gorging now then you may have never liked playing gorge. I will agree i feel the bile mine is pretty useless. I got hit with one the last time i played and was confused as to why it felt like nothing happened.
Disagree with literally everything except the last sentence. Server ops can run servers with more than 20 players, it would just be in arcade. If you played Ns2 seriously at any point in time you would realize how RANKED servers need to have less players. Any more than current numbers just wrecks game mechanics and player roles. However I would also argue less players than 16-20 gets boring, at least for me. That is why i like how servers are doing ranges of 8 to 10 players per team which gives everyone the ability to choose the game that has the right amount of players for them.
Wrong, server ops can NOT run servers with more than 20 slots.
It will not be "simply arcade" what it would be is simply a disaster filled with unstoppable pub stompers.
Going from 20 players to 22-24 is not anywhere remotely close to suddenly having 30-40+ players.
Without access to the hive ranking and a way for players on the server to rank up it is impossible to have balanced games on lower player count servers.
You do not see this as a problem in really high player count servers because at that point there is so many players it is not going to matter.
This could be solved if they allowed hive to still work on the 21-24 player count servers.
I saw the same thing happening back in the days of CoD's decline... "ranked" included all the leveling, prestige, etc and was forced matchmaking... "unranked" had no leveling, no prestige, but included necessities for a decent game (ie server browser, community owned servers)
There was no reason whatsoever for them to take leveling and prestige away from "unranked" (as opposed to just having two databases, one ranked one unranked) just as there's no reason for UWE dev's to block hive on the "unranked" 22 player servers... just have two databases for each "ranked" and "arcade"
Example: Say you join a "ranked" 16 player server (8v8) and are a tier 4 1700 hiveskill... You join an "arcade" 24 player server and are a tier 6 with 2600 hiveskill.
There's no reason to harm/punish a portion of your playerbase.
Fracturing the community will likely result in both sides failing harder at getting a server seeded. Best case scenario is that we maintain the 24 player servers because again, seeding is hard, high player counts, high spec counts are better at surviving but that defeats the purpose of lowering the player count. Allowing larger player counts to be separately viable will only accelerate the game's decline. If you can't seed, people will stop coming and that is it.
Oh, they are not harming us, they are harming themselves.
There are plenty of other games to play with, instead of waiting on a server for 1 hour to seed, then play 2 rounds before the server dies again.
Or just to wait in the server browser for a slot to open up on one of the populated (and performant) servers.
But i'm sure it was worth it, i would just love to know the real reason.
Except the community is already "fractured" isn't it. There are already 22-24 player servers populating, not to mention ns2large.
Literally all this would do is allow the entire community to function with hiveskill/shuffle instead of only a portion of the community.
With hiveskill and shuffle restricted all they're doing is punishing people who prefer 11v11 and up in an attempt to force them into 10v10 or less...
Quick play and the "ranked" server tab could still be 10v10 (or 8v8 rather) only while anything higher is in the "arcade" tab. That prevents higher playercount servers from siphoning off new unsuspecting players.
Yes, it is. No reason to make it worse.
Siphoning isn't the problem here. Making things easier for one is also simultaneously making things harder for the other. And I think that facilitating higher player counts while forcing lower player counts makes things worse for both sides.
It isn't even a big deal unless someone has a massive skill change. Since you aren't going for new players, why do you care? To make things a tiny bit harder for smurfs?
The hiveskill system does need a major overhaul (separate scores for each side) but until then it's better than nothing.
Because no hiveskill or shuffle means horribly one sided games 24/7
I just fail to see how giving all servers working hiveskill/shuffle could make anything worse.
Endorsing a different mode makes things worse because you are splitting the available pool of players. At the most extreme end, you would require double the amount of players to get servers seeded. That is unlikely as quick play will direct players to official player counts plus players might not care either way, but splitting any amount of players is not a good idea when we already have so few.
They aren't "endorsing" it unless it's linked to quick play and in the ranked tab.
Also it not being up to date is a much bigger deal than you realize, especially since they're supposedly working on separate scores for each team. (Which would dramatically improve shuffles)
It's sabotaging certain servers in an attempt to force people out of them, and there's never any reason for that.
Maintaining a separate database for a separate player count isn't endorsing it? Hahahahahaha.
And people's hive scores don't change that much or drastically, so it doesn't matter if you aren't going for "unsuspecting new players". Even if a couple of them do improve, well, the appeal of larger servers is that an individual's output is diluted. So what is the big deal? Separate scores? I'll believe it when I see it, but the data collection supposedly started awhile ago, so it isn't an issue there either.
By that argument, why fret over hiveskill at all in the first place? 90% of the playerbase is stable.
That reasoning is nonsensical....
For new players and vanity. It has very little to do with balance at this point in the game.
You cant just ignore the small but existing influx of new players.
Most of them had been gaming for decades, and will hand you your kharaa arse as a marine.
All it takes is for them to prefer the arcade tab - where his ranking will never change - and he can single-handedly mess up all the rounds.
Maybe that IS the plan in the long run, so UWE can kill off the arcade tab.
But i dont think that half of the playerbase would migrate to ranked, 10v10 servers.