Large marine nerf right before finals. You guys have really wierd timing with these things.
The timing is not weird at all. We specifically made these balance tweaks based on talking to the competitive teams, including the guys who are going to be playing in the finals. It was requested that some marine nerfs be made in order to make the gameplay better in Cologne, as marines have been winning at a much higher rate in comp games.
We held off on any large changes that we are still planning on making, specifically to avoid changing the game up too much before the finals, but you can expect to see some of them making their way into the game soon after the Cologne event is over.
--Cory
As I look at the stats and as I have been playing the game, I think it is completely and totally balanced since build 240. NS2Stats show like 51% aliens. So why are you guys fixing something that isn't broken???? I read this post and it is another example of a pattern. That pattern is UWE seems to cater to the competive people and their requests/complaints more than the whole. For balance, the whole is the stats which say "don't fix me, I am not broken". Yet, build 244 is quite clearly a marine NERF patch.
Does UWE want the stats of build 238/239 again? Where myself and others uninstalled the game? All I can say is AT BEST, this patch will do nothing. Anything else is all down hill.
NSStats gives a very incomplete picture since it's only a very small slice of servers (most the pub games coming out of KKG). Remember the internal stats that we have actually provide information on every single NS2 game ever played so we know exactly what's going on across every game.
Again while NSStats gives "accurate" stats, it's very small sample of actual games played and does not reflect accurately as to the entire state of balance to the game. The stats maintained internally record every game of NS2 ever played, so data can be parsed accordingly to give a more complete picture of the state of game balance.
As I look at the stats and as I have been playing the game, I think it is completely and totally balanced since build 240. NS2Stats show like 51% aliens. So why are you guys fixing something that isn't broken???? I read this post and it is another example of a pattern. That pattern is UWE seems to cater to the competive people and their requests/complaints more than the whole. For balance, the whole is the stats which say "don't fix me, I am not broken". Yet, build 244 is quite clearly a marine NERF patch.
Does UWE want the stats of build 238/239 again? Where myself and others uninstalled the game? All I can say is AT BEST, this patch will do nothing. Anything else is all down hill.
The stats from NS2Stats don't include all servers out there, only those who installed the mod.
UWE has their own internal stats which have likely more detail and merit. Plus balancing just around a %-rate doesn't do the job either if it doesn't tell you how those percentages were achieved.
If you really want to argue with NS2Stats: it says that marines have a 65% win rate for pub+comp games that last between 5 and 10 minutes. Aliens have a 60% win rate for games that only last 5 minutes, which is due to early rushes or situations where the marines got a newbie comm who would mess up and the marines forfeit the game anyway, so that I wouldn't consider these as real matches.
The balance changes in this patch only address the issue with early game marine dominance by slowing their tech a bit down, that's all. Nothing related to combat itself was changed.
Also, ultimately you have to cater to comp more than to pub, even though they try to cater to both in equal ways.
In comp does every player know exactly what to do, so any imbalances in the matches are not due to player inexperience and thus comp represents a more accurate approximation of the game's "true inherent" balance than pub matches could ever show. In the end do pub players also aspire the comp level of skill as their goal.
@MrChoke I am always amazed how people never read what other people said. It's even more amazing when those people quote the post they should have read!
I think the idea is that just having a 50:50 win rate isn't enough to say "the game's balanced, no more changes". One of the main problems at present is that marines dominate in the early game and aliens are often left hanging on until they can get fades, at which point it flips back in their favour. With this patch it looks like UWE are trying to give the aliens more of a fighting chance to win some games without fades or at least be able to play a bit more aggressively in the early game.
I think it's unfortunate that Cory said that they made changes in conjunction with the desires of the competitive teams because now all the public zealots will start haranguing them about favouring comp play over public, which is blatantly not the case - most patches have more changes that annoy comp players than please them in my experience.
There is a question of compromise between a 50:50 win rate and a game that feels balanced and fun at all stages of all games, this is not the current state of the game so changes are needed and welcome, as they always will be until UWE can't bring themselves to do it any more!
I was kinda hoping for a small buff to skulk movement, so I'm slightly disappointed. But there's still lots in the changelog to like.
i concur.
in fact, rather suddenly all alien lifeforms except fade feel incredibly 'sluggish' to me. not necessarily slow, but just feel sooo 'heavy' like you're piloting an ARC. using the walls in combat as skulk is sooooo cumbersome; you have such a weak floor jump and awful acceleration - when 'going for the wall' in combat it feels like you're a snail. imo this is why shotgun feels so OP - it takes 10 minutes to scale a couple of metres up a wall and 'bait' a more difficult shot - ergo you're inclined to 'W+M1' or just run straight at the shotgun like a moron.
even the lerk, sometimes you want to change direction/snag something, then begin 'floating' and have to press space bar 3000 times to start gliding again. i also wish belly slide gave you a little more speed on flat ground.
perhaps i feel this way because i've been playing balance test mod. bunny hopping is fun.
@MrChoke I am always amazed how people never read what other people said. It's even more amazing when those people quote the post they should have read!
Huh? I read what the UWE person said and commented. I don't care what non-UWE people have to say. That includes you.
NSStats gives a very incomplete picture since it's only a very small slice of servers (most the pub games coming out of KKG). Remember the internal stats that we have actually provide information on every single NS2 game ever played so we know exactly what's going on across every game.
Again while NSStats gives "accurate" stats, it's very small sample of actual games played and does not reflect accurately as to the entire state of balance to the game. The stats maintained internally record every game of NS2 ever played, so data can be parsed accordingly to give a more complete picture of the state of game balance.
Who is we? You are a playtester, right? Do you have access to the Spark engine stats that UWE has? If not, what stats are you using?
I still get the server menu updating with only my favourites on it, even with it ticked or unticked
just refreshes my favourites only sometimes
I get the same thing. with 999 ping and no updates on the map, mode or how many players the server have.
But when I join them I have no connection problem what so ever with a nice 77-ish ping. I have been having this problem since patch 240. But I never really mind cause I still can join my favorite servers.
@MrChoke I am always amazed how people never read what other people said. It's even more amazing when those people quote the post they should have read!
Huh? I read what the UWE person said and commented. I don't care what non-UWE people have to say. That includes you.
Apparently you didn't read every post every UWE employee ever made, yet you bitch at people who just paraphrase statements that UWE made before about this topic.
So if you don't want to discuss with non-UWE people in this forum and UWE people were to ignore you in your conceited state since they don't feel like saying the same stuff again and again just so that you get it… why are you even posting in this forum then if there is nobody to talk with?
It's not even a comp nerf, only 3-4 teams in the world have this exact problem of dropping 2 IP, fast ups and 3 man pressure teams that do damage. This nerf is literally to stop archaea/nexzil from taking turns pounding each other as marines and deliberately slowing the game down to make it more 'spectator' friendly for an upcoming show match at the expense of the other 2k+ players who have to play this version of the game balanced around the not even 1%.
So it's not catering to competitive at all, it's blatantly ignoring the entire public population that is playing the game in an effort to make a single fucking show match look slightly better for some spectators in the off chance people will come over and buy NS2...meanwhile in normal person world, marines and skulks are fucking horrible to play and marines have 0 recourse or counter to the inevitable life form explosion at the 9 min mark and leave the game in droves, instead of fixing the skulk movement nerf in 240 you just made pre 10 minute marines just as shitty to play.
And if the balance mod is any indication of upcoming changes I seriously have no idea what it is exactly you wanted to achieve with NS2, it started out as a more stream lined, simpler version of NS 1 in an effort to make it more accessible while retaining some aspects of it that made it 'Natural Selection' and keeping rounds to the 15-25 min mark, now every change is trying to artificial-y drag the game out longer in the most painful ways known to man.
Lerks just got buffed 1000x, there's about 3-4 lerks in Aus that I will honestly just change servers on during this patch, all of them admit lerks were OP as fuck for the last 4-5 months in the right hands, delayed upgrades in pubs has just exaggerated this into a game I don't even want to play anymore, they were going 20+-2 as lerks before the marine nerf.
@MrChoke I am always amazed how people never read what other people said. It's even more amazing when those people quote the post they should have read!
Huh? I read what the UWE person said and commented. I don't care what non-UWE people have to say. That includes you.
I can see that, and you did it again, you don't care what other say and then you post irrelevant things... while the response to your post is simply in the one you just quoted. Please read, or rererereread posts or wait several hours and reread posts before commenting them, It's easier to respond to something once this is done
It's not even a comp nerf, only 3-4 teams in the world have this exact problem of dropping 2 IP, fast ups and 3 man pressure teams that do damage. This nerf is literally to stop archaea/nexzil from taking turns pounding each other as marines and deliberately slowing the game down to make it more 'spectator' friendly for an upcoming show match at the expense of the other 2k+ players who have to play this version of the game balanced around the not even 1%.
So it's not catering to competitive at all, it's blatantly ignoring the entire public population that is playing the game in an effort to make a single fucking show match look slightly better for some spectators in the off chance people will come over and buy NS2...meanwhile in normal person world, marines and skulks are fucking horrible to play and marines have 0 recourse or counter to the inevitable life form explosion at the 9 min mark and leave the game in droves, instead of fixing the skulk movement nerf in 240 you just made pre 10 minute marines just as shitty to play.
And if the balance mod is any indication of upcoming changes I seriously have no idea what it is exactly you wanted to achieve with NS2, it started out as a more stream lined, simpler version of NS 1 in an effort to make it more accessible while retaining some aspects of it that made it 'Natural Selection' and keeping rounds to the 15-25 min mark, now every change is trying to artificial-y drag the game out longer in the most painful ways known to man.
I agree to an extent. this change was basically made for the sake of change while completely ignoring the other possible things that could have been changed to make the game fun while achieving the same effect. namely, fixing trashcan Skulks. marine heavy aggression is a positive thing and they were speaking of nerfing medpacks instead of just allowing Skulks the possibility to deal with it. everything just gets repeatedly nerfed in relation to each other, this is kind of getting ridiculous.
[quote="Gliss;2104599"] everything just gets repeatedly nerfed in relation to each other, this is kind of getting ridiculous.[/quote]
Not everything, gorge tunnels got buffed.... lol.
I agree though, UWE is making the same mistake that most developers make and that is constant nerfing to achieve balance, rather than buffing other aspects to achieve the same result, which also has the side affect of making the game more fun.
JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited April 2013
The visual runtime errors crashes are gone, however now I often load into a black screen where the game fails to respond for ~20 seconds. If I leave it it doesn't crash thankfully.
I agree to an extent. this change was basically made for the sake of change while completely ignoring the other possible things that could have been changed to make the game fun while achieving the same effect. namely, fixing trashcan Skulks. marine heavy aggression is a positive thing and they were speaking of nerfing medpacks instead of just allowing Skulks the possibility to deal with it. everything just gets repeatedly nerfed in relation to each other, this is kind of getting ridiculous.
Why do I have to keep repeating myself? We picked balance tweaks that would be easy and fast to make, with relatively little testing time required, in order to be able to get a patch out with enough time before the finals. Bigger changes that are not just small nerfs are coming. You can even see and play the stuff that is being worked on and tested out, in Andi's balance mod. It sounds like some people here wanted us to change the whole game around RIGHT before a major finals event. Reworking the entire movement code, for example, would be crazy to do a week before Cologne, but you can see it is something that is in the works.
We try and make changes to the game with both pub and comp in mind, and this patch was no different. Yes, we'd like to improve the way the Cologne event plays out, considering we've spent a lot of time and money putting it together, and of course we view it as a way of advertising the game and bringing in new players, but we also specifically chose balance adjustments that would have a minimal impact on pub play.
While we're at it, score is twenty (as in four score and ten is 90), and fortnight is definitely a word. How could anyone argue that these are not words?!
As far as I know, no one was arguing that score and fortnight are not words. Just that no one, outside of people in Biopic movies about Lincoln, uses these words in everyday conversation anymore :P
I agree to an extent. this change was basically made for the sake of change while completely ignoring the other possible things that could have been changed to make the game fun while achieving the same effect. namely, fixing trashcan Skulks. marine heavy aggression is a positive thing and they were speaking of nerfing medpacks instead of just allowing Skulks the possibility to deal with it. everything just gets repeatedly nerfed in relation to each other, this is kind of getting ridiculous.
Why do I have to keep repeating myself? We picked balance tweaks that would be easy and fast to make, with relatively little testing time required, in order to be able to get a patch out with enough time before the finals. Bigger changes that are not just small nerfs are coming. You can even see and play the stuff that is being worked on and tested out, in Andi's balance mod. It sounds like some people here wanted us to change the whole game around RIGHT before a major finals event. Reworking the entire movement code, for example, would be crazy to do a week before Cologne, but you can see it is something that is in the works.
We try and make changes to the game with both pub and comp in mind, and this patch was no different. Yes, we'd like to improve the way the Cologne event plays out, considering we've spent a lot of time and money putting it together, and of course we view it as a way of advertising the game and bringing in new players, but we also specifically chose balance adjustments that would have a minimal impact on pub play.
that's why I said "to an extent", as I agree with some of the changes in the short-term. they are pretty much insignificant in terms of affecting pub play, which is good. long-term, however, it doesn't even look like Skulk acceleration / air acceleration is getting considered - but I suppose that's a discussion for the balance mod thread. however I was also commenting on the overall design direction of NS2 which seems to be continually nerfing everything to equal levels. instead of buffing everything to equally viable levels, it feels as though everything is awful such that something minor (3+ marine pressure, for example) is considered "game-breaking", and "could lead to a coinflip win".
this wasn't an issue in the beta because Skulks had OP air acceleration and a useful walljump. 3+ marine pressure was incredibly common and it was actually really easily answered. it was eventually phased out in favor of split-pressure by marines, as it was almost guaranteed that the marines would end up dying so you had to time your attacks to pull the aliens apart. this is even including beta-performance and back then when our aim was not even close to as good. Skulks just got repeatedly nerfed to the point where having three marines in the same room is now seen as an unstoppable force. now, in response to that, instead of fixing Skulks to a state where they are fun, marine aggressive potential is also nerfed.
edit: and the balance mod is not really taking the fun direction either, as Skulks still are bricked in terms of air acceleration potential. many things considered for the balance mod are still straight up nerfs or side-grades as answers to balance issues.
the other issues that I had in mind such as fixing Skulk acceleration are small enough to be considered before the weekend event, and it's also been an issue for almost four builds. it was immediately recognized at its inception as problematic. air acceleration has been in its current state for much longer than that.
the time they were an open game developing team
instead of a game selling company.
development tab (pivotal tracker e.g.) and hand in hand with their community.
countless hours of talking to newspapers to preview the game,
bought more than one copy of ns2 special editions
convinced all my friends to buy a copy of ns2
working on a competitive team and so forth
i guess i did my job!
i paid so much in so many ways for that game to become a real good thing.
but what do i experience now?
they are going for a GORGEOUS update instead of a PERFORMANCE update,
we still play on an engine feeling like a game before 1998 (i am talking about
early HL versions i played on 133 and 233 pentium and celeron machines)
but i bought a machine worth something between 2000 and 3000€
to play it as good as possible, yes i am a NS nerd, a very disappointed one!
what is the community asking for MONTH now, besides fixing the
outstanding bad netcode (for a 50% competitive game?come on,
all the open source shooters handle it 10 times better) low server and
client performance:
bind all my keys, like mwheel down
"last used weapon" binding
i hear about that every day, all those minor looking things i hear
every day in gathers and on servers.
most ppl stopped writing about it after some month i guess,
cause there are still ppl stopping to play ns2 every day.
i was playing online competitive for more than a decade and
never experienced such a constant high fluctuation in the teams.
your thoughts about that? i dont know what to do,
since two weeks i am thinking a lot about also quitting ns2 too.
but its hard after all the heart blood i talked into it.
still now i am convincing guys in comp hardware stores
to buy ns2 but ...
While we're at it, score is twenty (as in four score and ten is 90), and fortnight is definitely a word. How could anyone argue that these are not words?!
As far as I know, no one was arguing that score and fortnight are not words. Just that no one, outside of people in Biopic movies about Lincoln, uses these words in everyday conversation anymore :P
Over here in the UK, fortnight is a very, very commonly used word. I would say I use it approximately a score of times per fortnight, in fact. Score (in that sense) not so much.
It sounds like some people here wanted us to change the whole game around RIGHT before a major finals event. Reworking the entire movement code, for example, would be crazy to do a week before Cologne, but you can see it is something that is in the works.
Because you didn't change the whole game with the changes in gorgeous right before the tournament started, amirite?
Comments
Temporarily disabled the music in Club due to a bug(should be fixed for the next patch)'
Thats funny, I though it had been disabled because the only time i've heard it was on the acctual gorgeous patch and not after that
Saved me countless times.
NSStats gives a very incomplete picture since it's only a very small slice of servers (most the pub games coming out of KKG). Remember the internal stats that we have actually provide information on every single NS2 game ever played so we know exactly what's going on across every game.
Again while NSStats gives "accurate" stats, it's very small sample of actual games played and does not reflect accurately as to the entire state of balance to the game. The stats maintained internally record every game of NS2 ever played, so data can be parsed accordingly to give a more complete picture of the state of game balance.
Belly sliding!
The stats from NS2Stats don't include all servers out there, only those who installed the mod.
UWE has their own internal stats which have likely more detail and merit. Plus balancing just around a %-rate doesn't do the job either if it doesn't tell you how those percentages were achieved.
If you really want to argue with NS2Stats: it says that marines have a 65% win rate for pub+comp games that last between 5 and 10 minutes. Aliens have a 60% win rate for games that only last 5 minutes, which is due to early rushes or situations where the marines got a newbie comm who would mess up and the marines forfeit the game anyway, so that I wouldn't consider these as real matches.
The balance changes in this patch only address the issue with early game marine dominance by slowing their tech a bit down, that's all. Nothing related to combat itself was changed.
Also, ultimately you have to cater to comp more than to pub, even though they try to cater to both in equal ways.
In comp does every player know exactly what to do, so any imbalances in the matches are not due to player inexperience and thus comp represents a more accurate approximation of the game's "true inherent" balance than pub matches could ever show. In the end do pub players also aspire the comp level of skill as their goal.
I think it's unfortunate that Cory said that they made changes in conjunction with the desires of the competitive teams because now all the public zealots will start haranguing them about favouring comp play over public, which is blatantly not the case - most patches have more changes that annoy comp players than please them in my experience.
There is a question of compromise between a 50:50 win rate and a game that feels balanced and fun at all stages of all games, this is not the current state of the game so changes are needed and welcome, as they always will be until UWE can't bring themselves to do it any more!
i concur.
in fact, rather suddenly all alien lifeforms except fade feel incredibly 'sluggish' to me. not necessarily slow, but just feel sooo 'heavy' like you're piloting an ARC. using the walls in combat as skulk is sooooo cumbersome; you have such a weak floor jump and awful acceleration - when 'going for the wall' in combat it feels like you're a snail. imo this is why shotgun feels so OP - it takes 10 minutes to scale a couple of metres up a wall and 'bait' a more difficult shot - ergo you're inclined to 'W+M1' or just run straight at the shotgun like a moron.
even the lerk, sometimes you want to change direction/snag something, then begin 'floating' and have to press space bar 3000 times to start gliding again. i also wish belly slide gave you a little more speed on flat ground.
perhaps i feel this way because i've been playing balance test mod. bunny hopping is fun.
Huh? I read what the UWE person said and commented. I don't care what non-UWE people have to say. That includes you.
Who is we? You are a playtester, right? Do you have access to the Spark engine stats that UWE has? If not, what stats are you using?
I get the same thing. with 999 ping and no updates on the map, mode or how many players the server have.
But when I join them I have no connection problem what so ever with a nice 77-ish ping. I have been having this problem since patch 240. But I never really mind cause I still can join my favorite servers.
Apparently you didn't read every post every UWE employee ever made, yet you bitch at people who just paraphrase statements that UWE made before about this topic.
So if you don't want to discuss with non-UWE people in this forum and UWE people were to ignore you in your conceited state since they don't feel like saying the same stuff again and again just so that you get it… why are you even posting in this forum then if there is nobody to talk with?
So it's not catering to competitive at all, it's blatantly ignoring the entire public population that is playing the game in an effort to make a single fucking show match look slightly better for some spectators in the off chance people will come over and buy NS2...meanwhile in normal person world, marines and skulks are fucking horrible to play and marines have 0 recourse or counter to the inevitable life form explosion at the 9 min mark and leave the game in droves, instead of fixing the skulk movement nerf in 240 you just made pre 10 minute marines just as shitty to play.
And if the balance mod is any indication of upcoming changes I seriously have no idea what it is exactly you wanted to achieve with NS2, it started out as a more stream lined, simpler version of NS 1 in an effort to make it more accessible while retaining some aspects of it that made it 'Natural Selection' and keeping rounds to the 15-25 min mark, now every change is trying to artificial-y drag the game out longer in the most painful ways known to man.
Lerks just got buffed 1000x, there's about 3-4 lerks in Aus that I will honestly just change servers on during this patch, all of them admit lerks were OP as fuck for the last 4-5 months in the right hands, delayed upgrades in pubs has just exaggerated this into a game I don't even want to play anymore, they were going 20+-2 as lerks before the marine nerf.
everything just gets repeatedly nerfed in relation to each other, this is kind of getting ridiculous.[/quote]
Not everything, gorge tunnels got buffed.... lol.
I agree though, UWE is making the same mistake that most developers make and that is constant nerfing to achieve balance, rather than buffing other aspects to achieve the same result, which also has the side affect of making the game more fun.
I'm wondering this as well, who is we?
Next up is the lag when opening Options, hopefully.
We try and make changes to the game with both pub and comp in mind, and this patch was no different. Yes, we'd like to improve the way the Cologne event plays out, considering we've spent a lot of time and money putting it together, and of course we view it as a way of advertising the game and bringing in new players, but we also specifically chose balance adjustments that would have a minimal impact on pub play.
this wasn't an issue in the beta because Skulks had OP air acceleration and a useful walljump. 3+ marine pressure was incredibly common and it was actually really easily answered. it was eventually phased out in favor of split-pressure by marines, as it was almost guaranteed that the marines would end up dying so you had to time your attacks to pull the aliens apart. this is even including beta-performance and back then when our aim was not even close to as good. Skulks just got repeatedly nerfed to the point where having three marines in the same room is now seen as an unstoppable force. now, in response to that, instead of fixing Skulks to a state where they are fun, marine aggressive potential is also nerfed.
edit: and the balance mod is not really taking the fun direction either, as Skulks still are bricked in terms of air acceleration potential. many things considered for the balance mod are still straight up nerfs or side-grades as answers to balance issues.
the other issues that I had in mind such as fixing Skulk acceleration are small enough to be considered before the weekend event, and it's also been an issue for almost four builds. it was immediately recognized at its inception as problematic. air acceleration has been in its current state for much longer than that.
the time before hugh and 300 000 sold copies.
the time they were an open game developing team
instead of a game selling company.
development tab (pivotal tracker e.g.) and hand in hand with their community.
countless hours of talking to newspapers to preview the game,
bought more than one copy of ns2 special editions
convinced all my friends to buy a copy of ns2
working on a competitive team and so forth
i guess i did my job!
i paid so much in so many ways for that game to become a real good thing.
but what do i experience now?
they are going for a GORGEOUS update instead of a PERFORMANCE update,
we still play on an engine feeling like a game before 1998 (i am talking about
early HL versions i played on 133 and 233 pentium and celeron machines)
but i bought a machine worth something between 2000 and 3000€
to play it as good as possible, yes i am a NS nerd, a very disappointed one!
what is the community asking for MONTH now, besides fixing the
outstanding bad netcode (for a 50% competitive game?come on,
all the open source shooters handle it 10 times better) low server and
client performance:
bind all my keys, like mwheel down
"last used weapon" binding
i hear about that every day, all those minor looking things i hear
every day in gathers and on servers.
most ppl stopped writing about it after some month i guess,
cause there are still ppl stopping to play ns2 every day.
i was playing online competitive for more than a decade and
never experienced such a constant high fluctuation in the teams.
your thoughts about that? i dont know what to do,
since two weeks i am thinking a lot about also quitting ns2 too.
but its hard after all the heart blood i talked into it.
still now i am convincing guys in comp hardware stores
to buy ns2 but ...
Over here in the UK, fortnight is a very, very commonly used word. I would say I use it approximately a score of times per fortnight, in fact. Score (in that sense) not so much.
Because you didn't change the whole game with the changes in gorgeous right before the tournament started, amirite?
Right on.