Those of you who are seeing dips, you may be running in fullscreen windowed mode. There is a bug in that which limits your framerate to 60fps. Just change from that to another mode and back, and it should be working at full speed again. This will be fixed in the next patch.
Also, it's worth noting the patch has been out for little over 12 hours. You cannot make a balance prediction until more data is gathered and also learning all the tactics and plays that the changes and new features have introduced. Please play lots more games before saying "The XXXX is terrible". Changes to the skulk movement were absolutely necessary and will force people to play differently. Different is not bad.
What does "Reduced phase gate rate from 0.5 to 0.2 seconds" mean? Sounds like PGs phase marines faster (rate of 0.5 to 0.2 seconds), but it says that it "reduced phase gate rate"...
Faster now Just like reload times, or skill colddowns - reducing time spend is a buff
"Reformatted from earlier post to make reading easier"
Personally I like a lot of what they were trying to do with this patch and this is my view of the pros and cons and issues with this patch after a good 3 or so hours of playtime. A new map was long overdue and the new map is pretty, it has some slight balance issues but I'm sure those will be ironed out in the next week or so. However there are a couple of both minor and major issues with the patch.
-Gorges
First gorges, as a gorge the fact that bile bomb got nerfed is kind of back and forth. Yes bile bomb is super powerful but it keeps getting nerfed and it means that gorges have to go in close and get killed often. I agree with the damage debuff but as a support class the gorge should be at the back therefore I disagree with the range buff. Next the basically alien gorge tunnels, they are a lot of fun and give a whole new roll as a gorge. However 10 res plus a 30 res investment by the com is a bit steep, combine that with the fact that marines can go through them and they really have some issues. I have seen many a base seiged by marines through a gorge tunnel which is just silly. Either the tunnels should not allow marine access or they should be cheaper. Finally with babblers they are really not that intuitive nor really all that useful. They don't really auto attack or any thing like that and therefore for a gorge to use them they have to use another arced spit which is the last thing the gorge needs. Really I think they are mostly fine but once built I think they should attack without the gorge having to spit around and you only need to use the spit if you want to direct them.
-Skulks
Next onto skulks. The hitbox changes are a good thing they make sense and are a welcome addition. However skulks are now super easy to kill for players with a reasonable amount of skill, personally I think the best fix for this is just a slight speed increase for skulks to make them harder to hit because getting to a back jumping marine as a skulk is nigh impossible.
-Lerks
Lerks also need some fix, I don't know what it is (Not a big lerk guy) but the tracers make them too easy to spot and their hitboxes are fixed making them super easy to kill.
-Fades and Oni
Oni and fades remain generally unchanged so thats that. As for the new cloaking, I personally have little experience with it but is seems generally fine with just a few shade bugs to iron out.
-Phase gates
Next on the marine side the big change there is two-fold. One the phase gates got changed. This seems like a minor change a .4 second change in the delay to get through a phase gate, however when trying to take a phase gate it is possible for the entire team to phase through in just about 1 second. This is ridiculous and although the previous time was too long this is far too short and needs to be adjusted.
-Exos
Next the railgun exo, great addition its freaking awesome, but it kind of makes the already pretty useless single exo totally useless. Currently the single minigun exo is not only slower then the railgun exo but is not anywhere near as good at killing things. One fix for this and how good railguns are right now would be just to add an extra tech required to get railguns. Then after you get single mini's you go either get dual exos or railguns.
-Conclusion
As for decent it is a good map with an amazing aesthetic I love it thanks you so much for adding it, a tad marine biased but now that the masses have gotten it I'm sure we we will see balance changes soon. So in general though I am positive about the update and can't wait for more and just hope some hotfixes come soon.
Changes to the skulk movement were absolutely necessary and will force people to play differently. Different is not bad.
It was playing on the Yo server which made me realize just how badly Skulk movement needed SOMETHING done to it. Some of the players are scary good on there
UWE should never have changed the bile bomb, it was the only good effective thing vs mass arc’s and exo suits. Now with the very reduced range it places the gorges in far too much damage range for them to be effective. For the players that think the bile bomb was op well think about the mobile siege cannon that can shoot thru walls, that’s op.
I think it's naive to think that any of these smaller changes will have a serious enough impact on balance. It's downright frustrating really that UWE is giving the impression that they think their game is in a good enough state balance-wise for it to only need 'finetuning'. Newsflash, it isn't. It needs some MAJOR changes for this game to ever become balanced, as has clearly been illustrated in the plethora of in-depth balance analysis threads which clearly pointed out fundamental flaws in the alien economic model.
Stop messing with little titbits on the side and get down dirty if you are serious about fixing the huge alien bias.
-performance wise, I've seen no real decrease or increase (my comp is a few years old, getting on a bit)
-babblers are ADORABLE
-skulk feels like a big brick, were as before it just felt like a normal brick
-Gorges
as a support class the gorge should be at the back therefore I disagree with the range buff.
This is from the change-log:
reduced force from 13 to 11, so shorter effective range)
As I understand that ^ , it's not a decrease in how far a gorge can launch a bilebomb, but a decrease in area of effectiveness.
So in other words, less splashdamage.
-Gorges
as a support class the gorge should be at the back therefore I disagree with the range buff.
This is from the change-log:
reduced force from 13 to 11, so shorter effective range)
As I understand that ^ , it's not a decrease in how far a gorge can launch a bilebomb, but a decrease in area of effectiveness.
So in other words, less splashdamage.
Their range has reduced in how far the bile flies as far as I can tell.
UWE should never have changed the bile bomb, it was the only good effective thing vs mass arc’s and exo suits. Now with the very reduced range it places the gorges in far too much damage range for them to be effective. For the players that think the bile bomb was op well think about the mobile siege cannon that can shoot thru walls, that’s op.
I dunno I've seen gorges harassing exo / mac trains pretty successfully, they just need support. Bile is still getting a lot of use and I don't see a good reason to revert it.
-Gorges
as a support class the gorge should be at the back therefore I disagree with the range buff.
This is from the change-log:
reduced force from 13 to 11, so shorter effective range)
As I understand that ^ , it's not a decrease in how far a gorge can launch a bilebomb, but a decrease in area of effectiveness.
So in other words, less splashdamage.
"Force" implies the launch force of the ballistic projectile. Effectively how far it can be thrown.
to the skulk movement were absolutely necessary and will force people to play differently. Different is not bad.
ah yes, because you can make judgments before the data but nobody else can. I'm so glad you have such a balanced level headed view of the situation.
/ssssssssssss
Probably because he is the playtester organizer and plays more than almost everyone while having access to the devs to make on the fly changes and see how they play out?
Awesome patch, fps dips are gone and I can finally run the game with atmospherics on. The game runs smooth as butter even with the most busy fights going on.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited March 2013
First person spectate seems like a prototype, it's like you have 500 ping when watching someone. The sounds either don't play or play twice moments after one another. And there is a really obvious discrepancy between where they are aiming and what you see as a spectator.
Great that it's in, hope it sees a lot of improvement however.
-Gorges
as a support class the gorge should be at the back therefore I disagree with the range buff.
This is from the change-log:
reduced force from 13 to 11, so shorter effective range)
As I understand that ^ , it's not a decrease in how far a gorge can launch a bilebomb, but a decrease in area of effectiveness.
So in other words, less splashdamage.
"Force" implies the launch force of the ballistic projectile. Effectively how far it can be thrown.
With this many changes, it's not rightly fair to just list off the "nerfs" and "buffs" per team. You may be surprised at how big some of these changes are. There were lots of map changes, which can effectively be considered nerfs or buffs, depending on the situation. Small things like the spike smoke effect are HUGELY important. As a lerk player, having tracers pointing right at your location is a big disadvantage. So it's probably best to play out the game and come back a month or two from now and see what the game feels like. It takes a while for players to take advantage of the changes, particularly map changes. Strategy and mindset respond much slower than tactics and reaction.
Though, I'm glad the community is growing, I'd really hope that some of the newer folks out there try and balance out the team. Seems like the green players stick together and last night half my team was green. That usually doesn't end well for the green team and it's probably not the most effective way to learn the game. Anyways, welcome all new people!
I'll probably be back in a month or two when another balance patch comes along, Aliens simply have no chance right now, its not even worth attempting to play a match.
The "Gorgeous update" is pretty damn "ugly" if you ask me. Obviously sloppy when major advertised additions to the game don't even work (babblers) properly.
If that addition was so lazily added to the game, I feel its safe to assume (rightly or wrongly) that the balance changes were not well thought out either.
UWE has basically taken NS2 from my favorite game to play when I came home after work into "not worth loading into memory". Kindly fix before the next step which is uninstalling, thanks.
I'll probably be back in a month or two when another balance patch comes along, Aliens simply have no chance right now, its not even worth attempting to play a match.
The "Gorgeous update" is pretty damn "ugly" if you ask me. Obviously sloppy when major advertised additions to the game don't even work (babblers) properly.
If that addition was so lazily added to the game, I feel its safe to assume (rightly or wrongly) that the balance changes were not well thought out either.
UWE has basically taken NS2 from my favorite game to play when I came home after work into "not worth loading into memory". Kindly fix before the next step which is uninstalling, thanks.
I'll probably be back in a month or two when another balance patch comes along, Aliens simply have no chance right now, its not even worth attempting to play a match.
The "Gorgeous update" is pretty damn "ugly" if you ask me. Obviously sloppy when major advertised additions to the game don't even work (babblers) properly.
If that addition was so lazily added to the game, I feel its safe to assume (rightly or wrongly) that the balance changes were not well thought out either.
UWE has basically taken NS2 from my favorite game to play when I came home after work into "not worth loading into memory". Kindly fix before the next step which is uninstalling, thanks.
"Currently 42 players are playing in ns2stats enabled servers". Wow, that some serious meta-data, a whole 42 people! Thats like...3 servers!
Also, shows nothing about what the sample base is...this could be 5 games worth of data, nobody knows cause it doesn't say, and therefore means nothing.
Every game I've played since the patch, marines not only won, but dominated the entire match...on these was on pubs when green players on marines.
to the skulk movement were absolutely necessary and will force people to play differently. Different is not bad.
ah yes, because you can make judgments before the data but nobody else can. I'm so glad you have such a balanced level headed view of the situation.
/ssssssssssss
Well actually....I run one of the oldest NS communities on the internet, I've played both competetive and public play and I'm in charge of the whole NS2 Playtesting with over 900 hours played in NS2, and countless thousands in NS1.. So yes, I think I'm qualified.
Comments
I'm seeing higher FPS as well and the dips aren't as drastic.
Also, it's worth noting the patch has been out for little over 12 hours. You cannot make a balance prediction until more data is gathered and also learning all the tactics and plays that the changes and new features have introduced. Please play lots more games before saying "The XXXX is terrible". Changes to the skulk movement were absolutely necessary and will force people to play differently. Different is not bad.
Now that's a great patch for broken post
It was playing on the Yo server which made me realize just how badly Skulk movement needed SOMETHING done to it. Some of the players are scary good on there
Stop messing with little titbits on the side and get down dirty if you are serious about fixing the huge alien bias.
-babblers are ADORABLE
-skulk feels like a big brick, were as before it just felt like a normal brick
reduced force from 13 to 11, so shorter effective range)
As I understand that ^ , it's not a decrease in how far a gorge can launch a bilebomb, but a decrease in area of effectiveness.
So in other words, less splashdamage.
I dunno I've seen gorges harassing exo / mac trains pretty successfully, they just need support. Bile is still getting a lot of use and I don't see a good reason to revert it.
"Force" implies the launch force of the ballistic projectile. Effectively how far it can be thrown.
/ssssssssssss
so it turns out i was right, the momentum loss is a bug. A+ playtesting buddy.
Probably because he is the playtester organizer and plays more than almost everyone while having access to the devs to make on the fly changes and see how they play out?
Yes, I would think he can make those judgements.
per code diffs. base acceleration # is less than half of value in 239 (64 instead of 140) though ground and wall friction is half too.
Great that it's in, hope it sees a lot of improvement however.
Glad it isn't just me.
I guess the lag effect makes it less useful for detecting cheaters too.
Though, I'm glad the community is growing, I'd really hope that some of the newer folks out there try and balance out the team. Seems like the green players stick together and last night half my team was green. That usually doesn't end well for the green team and it's probably not the most effective way to learn the game. Anyways, welcome all new people!
The "Gorgeous update" is pretty damn "ugly" if you ask me. Obviously sloppy when major advertised additions to the game don't even work (babblers) properly.
If that addition was so lazily added to the game, I feel its safe to assume (rightly or wrongly) that the balance changes were not well thought out either.
UWE has basically taken NS2 from my favorite game to play when I came home after work into "not worth loading into memory". Kindly fix before the next step which is uninstalling, thanks.
http://ns2stats.org/
"Currently 42 players are playing in ns2stats enabled servers". Wow, that some serious meta-data, a whole 42 people! Thats like...3 servers!
Also, shows nothing about what the sample base is...this could be 5 games worth of data, nobody knows cause it doesn't say, and therefore means nothing.
Every game I've played since the patch, marines not only won, but dominated the entire match...on these was on pubs when green players on marines.
Well actually....I run one of the oldest NS communities on the internet, I've played both competetive and public play and I'm in charge of the whole NS2 Playtesting with over 900 hours played in NS2, and countless thousands in NS1.. So yes, I think I'm qualified.