If you are looking to buy ns2 wait
lego
Join Date: 2003-06-30 Member: 17819Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-06-30 Member: 17819Members, Constellation
I waited as long as humanely possible until the nostalgia bug finally bit me so hard that I had to try it out. I didn't want to have a bad first game experience in ns2 so I have been extremely patient. The videos Hugh has been posting on his youtube account made the game look very playable and fun. The videos themselves are incredibly misleading and don't really show the current state of the game. The core of ns2 is there and its a beautiful game but getting the game to work properly totally sucks.
After purchasing the game last night immediately upon loading it up on steam with excitement it crashed two times. I shrugged it off and said well it is beta so no big deal I am sure the game play will be excellent. Finally the game loads properly and I put my video settings as I do in most games 1024 by 768 pixels. Find a server with some people and connect. The game crashes again upon trying to connect to the server. Ok no big deal reload ns2 in steam reconnect to said server and touch nothing while it loads. Finally after a stuttery load I connect to the australian server. After I join aliens I notice the game is very choppy so much so that it is almost unplayable. I murder all my settings and turn everything off to see if that fixes the problem. Even at the very minimum of settings the game is still running extremely poorly. Not to mention the rifle sound bug is almost deafening.
Please unknown worlds (Charlie) team included can you work on some polish of what you currently have before fixing other issues? Anyone who buys ns2 right now with the idea of doing any real beta testing is in for a real shock. You will find a game that is still very unplayable. People shouldn't need insane rigs to play this game in it's current incarnation smoothly. I run Dragon age II - Call of duty black ops flawlessly and they are new releases so Ns2 should be no different.
My system specs:
Vista
4 gig ram
Intel core 2 quad cpu Q 6600 @ 2.4 ghz
Nvidia gforce 9500 gt
I am a long time supporter of UWE - ex ns vet - consti - one time team USA commander - short lived ns 1 beta tester
Every complaint thread should have some positives:
The music is excellent well done on that.
The lightning in tram was very well done sets a great atmosphere.
Skulk wall walking was perfect it felt flawless moving from ground to wall to roof.
That new marine hatchet was fun to use a welcomed addition.
Fade blink felt different but right, same goes with lerk, and skulk.
Marine sprinting is a welcomed addition I really enjoyed getting around the map quickly.
Alien flashlight is very cool neat addition.
With that said like I mention above you guys really need to work on some polish so we the testers can give you guys proper feedback, and really test the hell out of the game so it can be released in a magnificent manner. You guys should know this is already an issue especially with the lack of people actually playing ns2. If the game was in a more playable state I imagine you would see more servers and a ton more players.
So in closing anyone on the fence about ns2. Hold off on purchasing until a later date when more polish is added to the game. I have been reading posts on these forums for a long time and feel like no one has given an accurate representation of the current playability of ns2.
Regards,
Brian.
-Quick ninja edit:
After purchasing the game last night immediately upon loading it up on steam with excitement it crashed two times. I shrugged it off and said well it is beta so no big deal I am sure the game play will be excellent. Finally the game loads properly and I put my video settings as I do in most games 1024 by 768 pixels. Find a server with some people and connect. The game crashes again upon trying to connect to the server. Ok no big deal reload ns2 in steam reconnect to said server and touch nothing while it loads. Finally after a stuttery load I connect to the australian server. After I join aliens I notice the game is very choppy so much so that it is almost unplayable. I murder all my settings and turn everything off to see if that fixes the problem. Even at the very minimum of settings the game is still running extremely poorly. Not to mention the rifle sound bug is almost deafening.
Please unknown worlds (Charlie) team included can you work on some polish of what you currently have before fixing other issues? Anyone who buys ns2 right now with the idea of doing any real beta testing is in for a real shock. You will find a game that is still very unplayable. People shouldn't need insane rigs to play this game in it's current incarnation smoothly. I run Dragon age II - Call of duty black ops flawlessly and they are new releases so Ns2 should be no different.
My system specs:
Vista
4 gig ram
Intel core 2 quad cpu Q 6600 @ 2.4 ghz
Nvidia gforce 9500 gt
I am a long time supporter of UWE - ex ns vet - consti - one time team USA commander - short lived ns 1 beta tester
Every complaint thread should have some positives:
The music is excellent well done on that.
The lightning in tram was very well done sets a great atmosphere.
Skulk wall walking was perfect it felt flawless moving from ground to wall to roof.
That new marine hatchet was fun to use a welcomed addition.
Fade blink felt different but right, same goes with lerk, and skulk.
Marine sprinting is a welcomed addition I really enjoyed getting around the map quickly.
Alien flashlight is very cool neat addition.
With that said like I mention above you guys really need to work on some polish so we the testers can give you guys proper feedback, and really test the hell out of the game so it can be released in a magnificent manner. You guys should know this is already an issue especially with the lack of people actually playing ns2. If the game was in a more playable state I imagine you would see more servers and a ton more players.
So in closing anyone on the fence about ns2. Hold off on purchasing until a later date when more polish is added to the game. I have been reading posts on these forums for a long time and feel like no one has given an accurate representation of the current playability of ns2.
Regards,
Brian.
-Quick ninja edit:
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I for one can run the game on the smaller map Rockdown (might want to try that one), but someone here in the forums, who has similar PC as me can't run the game at all with 5-10FPS, where I can run it at 35-60 as of build 170. But don't expect smooth gameplay for me either, it is still stuttery (altough better then162, the previous build I was able to play) and highly dependent on server tickrate, which seems to go down on low end (bad) servers. Server demands of the NS2 dedi are of the chart
The servers which are able to maintain a minimum tickrate of 30 are beasts and on those the game is smooth (apart from local fps stutter)
Here's something you might want to try.
<ul><li>run in a window mode (for some reason fullscreen kills performance, at least for me)</li><li>turn off shadows (r_shadows 0)</li><li>turn off volumetric light -> I forgot the command for this, anyone?</li><li>turn off flash, not sure if that is still in maps. The menu seems to use last I heard (r_flash false)</li><li>try a server with Rockdown instead of Tram, Tram is an official release map, but I can't run it smoothly so you might want to try a server with Rockdown, which is a smaller test map</li><li>find a good server tickrate at a constant 30(net_stats)</li><li>fraps FPS or r_stats 1 fps indicator will tell you things</li></ul>
I've been completely honest with the results of the game so far and there are other people out there that can run the game buttery smooth (except for the fps stutter). but the game is currently mostly dependent on the server performance and CPU bottleneck, meaning you need a good server, which you can check using "net_stats" and it doesn't matter if you're using a I7 6core or a similarly speed Duo core as it is mostly using one core currently (sometimes 2 for servers I hear)
My specs and average FPS for build 170:
C2D E6420 2.16Ghz
2Gb OCZ 800Mhz
HD4850 512Mb
Running at medium, 1280x720 everything on like shadows and stuff
My average FPS is 35-60 with a severed drop at random in the aliens hive on Rockdown to 10-15
I can't run Tram, well I can walk around locally but online it kills my computer
If you're wondering about your performance-issues, this is probably it. NS2 (by way of Lua most probably) has an absoutely ludicrous appetite for CPU-cycles and will run like a ###### piece of ###### unless you have A LOT of cycles to spare, which 4x2.4GHz isn't (in NS2-terms of course, other games are more than happy with that amount). Add to that, that NS2 is barely multithreading, so you're effectively only able to use 2x2.4GHz. Hopefully (and I really don't want to say this more often, if only to not create false hope or put pressure on Max) the new Lua binding-layer, the sped up vector-math inside the Lua-VM and the reduced heap memory-garbage generated will smooth this out quite a bit.
Ha, you've been reading the forums for a long time and haven't noticed that every other thread is filled with people complaining about the performance issues? :P
We are working hard on improving performance, its a focus of our attention, and we are hoping that the next few upcoming patches will improve performance noticeably.
--Cory
1. Compared to any released game/mod, current NS2 beta performance is terrible. Compared to where it was a few months ago, it has improved significantly.
2. Unless you're fps is <10, any tweaks on your end will have no effect on performance. The current bottleneck is server-side so your only recourse is to play on servers with really good hardware and low player counts.
3. I rarely have a match where I don't crash at least once. However, it doesn't bother me too much because I can generally rejoin the server within a minute or so.
4. NS2 is currently an alpha rather than beta, if you go by the most common definition of the terms. You will need to adjust your expectations accordingly.
5. Despite all of the current problems, you can still have some really fun matches that leave you very satisfied and happy that you preordered.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Intergrate lua binding into the game<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
...supposed to make the performance go up quite a bit?
Core i5 2500 3.3GHZ
8GB DDR3 1333mhz ram
1GB ATI HD 5850
and the game still runs poorly(to be nice). It's not "unplayable", but it's choppy enough to make me rage, and complain... which I am doing now.
It's not the fps exactly that makes the game unplayable, I get 27fps average in crysis on max and that's still enjoyably playable. And it's not the mouse slide (due to tripple buffering being off) either, I fixed that. I get 50+fps in natural selection 2, yet it is still choppy. The team needs to really get this game running at it's absolute best before devoting so much time and effort into adding or changing features.
Read more, Post less. Infact, scroll up four posts. Seriously.
I got a Q6600 @3ghz
GTX 275 1gb ram
4 GB Memory
Vsync off
1920*1080
High Settings
Made some Fraps Benchmarks in Tram(opened a lan game) running and doing the same stuff over and over again.
Windowed with ShiftWindow(this programm fakes fullscreen, so it makes window mode look like fullscreen)
or normal Fullscreen.
<b>No noticeable differences in fps.</b>
Atmoshperics, Flash = false
<b>No fps min max average changes at all</b>
Shadows = false
<b>+~10 minimum fps</b>#
Overall:
My MAX fps stayed in all cases around 50 +-3, MIN from 14 to 27(shadows off)
While it doesnt look bad with MAX 50 MIN 27 with shadows disabled - the drops are still too high and you feel that its not smooth, but playable.
So only disabling shadows really helps.
Edit:
I also tested lowering the resolution and quality settings
Awfull improved min. fps by 1 (28fps) max 50
Changing resolution from 1080p to 720p (1280*720)
improved min. fps by another 3 fps (to 30) max stayed at 48
.......they've been focusing on performance since they released the engine test. Its just much harder to track down and fix performance problems than it is to put in a new feature or fix a bug.
Read more, Post less. Infact, scroll up four posts. Seriously.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Stop saying sensible stuff I agree with!
We are working hard on improving performance, its a focus of our attention, and we are hoping that the next few upcoming patches will improve performance noticeably.
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Woot i really hope that the performance gets better. Its a fun game but man o man the lag kills me.
We are working hard on improving performance, its a focus of our attention, and we are hoping that the next few upcoming patches will improve performance noticeably.
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree. I left a wall of text in a recent thread, because I didn't find it fair that people might buy the game and be unable to play it because they only checked the official system reqs and not the forums - but at 83 forum posts you should have bumped into the issue.
<!--quoteo(post=1840012:date=Apr 6 2011, 10:41 AM:name=Ironsoul)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Ironsoul @ Apr 6 2011, 10:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840012"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Hey guys, just adding in with this performance complaint. I upgraded my computer recently, so now it's a beastly computer (not a beast, but still:
Core i5 2500 3.3GHZ
8GB DDR3 1333mhz ram
1GB ATI HD 5850
and the game still runs poorly(to be nice). It's not "unplayable", but it's choppy enough to make me rage, and complain... which I am doing now.
It's not the fps exactly that makes the game unplayable, I get 27fps average in crysis on max and that's still enjoyably playable. And it's not the mouse slide (due to tripple buffering being off) either, I fixed that. I get 50+fps in natural selection 2, yet it is still choppy. The team needs to really get this game running at it's absolute best before devoting so much time and effort into adding or changing features.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I just upgraded to the exact same hardware for my rig. Game runs fine, and I will be even more excited when servers run better too
I like to call it "economic beta".
lol! I totally understand why UWE did it and think that it will work out for the best in the end, but there is a cost of slightly misrepresenting your product to encourage sales. You're basically going to engender a lot of buyers remorse and negativity that we've seen with the various complaints about performance and demands for refunds on this forum.
<!--coloro:#ffff00--><span style="color:#ffff00"><!--/coloro-->Nothing<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> is worse than BH. Except, maybe, its backers ;-)
<!--quoteo(post=1840058:date=Apr 6 2011, 07:47 PM:name=Feha)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Feha @ Apr 6 2011, 07:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840058"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I like to call it "economic beta".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Splendid wording mate, I should have thought of that.....
LLLLOOOOOOLLLLLLL
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BRILIANT