re mineshaft... i still think there's massive problems for alien.
in my experience it's stupidly hard to attack deposit and central drilling, and crusher seems like the most pathetically vulnerable RT location ever (and you might as well never build it). if you spawn in cave/sorting, where exactly can you go? there are massive shooting range corridors in every direction with no cover to coordinate a group attack.
imo the brew room and crusher need big changes to make them more alien friendly.... and move stupid crusher RT back to north tunnels (or remove one of the RT's from central to make it less of a priority).
crusher is meant to be the alien's RT alternative to 'the gap' (judged by standard map RT topology)... but it's so close to repair room that marines can easily kill both that and cavern RT's with absolutely no pres invested.
What's the deal with those inflationary use of "stupid", "pathetic" and so on? It's like I'm back at the schoolyard. You can actually make your point better without those immature crude language that does nothing more than insulting the mapper. Just try it. Read your own post without those words and you suddenly sound more convincing.
re mineshaft... i still think there's massive problems for alien.
in my experience it's stupidly hard to attack deposit and central drilling, and crusher seems like the most pathetically vulnerable RT location ever (and you might as well never build it). if you spawn in cave/sorting, where exactly can you go? there are massive shooting range corridors in every direction with no cover to coordinate a group attack.
imo the brew room and crusher need big changes to make them more alien friendly.... and move stupid crusher RT back to north tunnels (or remove one of the RT's from central to make it less of a priority).
Cavern RT is now easier to kill than Crusher. its closer to Repair than Crusher even. The problem isn't with the crusher room, its Cart Tunnel. Its this straight hallway that goes from Marine spawn right to those RTs.
It seems that servers cant load mods properly now. Usually one or more mods just doesn't load.. Server logs:
Downloading mods
VAC Enabled
Starting download of 'NSL Tram'
Download of 'NSL Tram' complete
Finished downloading and installing mods
Error: Mod wasn't available
Error: Mod wasn't available
Error: Mod wasn't available
Would be funny to watch live stream (Invinational) when server can't load current NSL map and every one disconnects or ns2stats/cross spawns wont work etc.. Its just random, sometimes it works
re mineshaft... i still think there's massive problems for alien.
in my experience it's stupidly hard to attack deposit and central drilling, and crusher seems like the most pathetically vulnerable RT location ever (and you might as well never build it). if you spawn in cave/sorting, where exactly can you go? there are massive shooting range corridors in every direction with no cover to coordinate a group attack.
imo the brew room and crusher need big changes to make them more alien friendly.... and move stupid crusher RT back to north tunnels (or remove one of the RT's from central to make it less of a priority).
Cavern RT is now easier to kill than Crusher. its closer to Repair than Crusher even. The problem isn't with the crusher room, its Cart Tunnel. Its this straight hallway that goes from Marine spawn right to those RTs.
yeah but cavern is the contest between cave and repair, it's meant to be a 'dodgy one'. crusher is meant to be between sorting and cave, but it's equidistant to repair room and the most direct route for aliens is through a skulk liquefier.
What's the deal with those inflationary use of "stupid", "pathetic" and so on? It's like I'm back at the schoolyard. You can actually make your point better without those immature crude language that does nothing more than insulting the mapper. Just try it. Read your own post without those words and you suddenly sound more convincing.
yeah i tapped into my pub server emotional experience, and have been redacting my post for 10 minutes :P
basically, mineshaft doesn't obide by the standard topology:
alien mineshaft = conveyor (no RT), sorting (TP), north tunnel (no RT), cave (TP) etc
marine mineshaft = gap (RT), operations (TP), pilot (RT), repair (TP) etc
where is the balance?
edit: veil doesn't have a symmetrical topology, but each side has 3 'easy' RT's and that leaves overlook, c12 and nano as the contested points. refinery, like mineshaft, has a missing RT between pipework and containment; unsurprising that many people feel that refinery is an unbalanced map as well.
re mineshaft... i still think there's massive problems for alien.
in my experience it's stupidly hard to attack deposit and central drilling, and crusher seems like the most pathetically vulnerable RT location ever (and you might as well never build it). if you spawn in cave/sorting, where exactly can you go? there are massive shooting range corridors in every direction with no cover to coordinate a group attack.
imo the brew room and crusher need big changes to make them more alien friendly.... and move stupid crusher RT back to north tunnels (or remove one of the RT's from central to make it less of a priority).
Cavern RT is now easier to kill than Crusher. its closer to Repair than Crusher even. The problem isn't with the crusher room, its Cart Tunnel. Its this straight hallway that goes from Marine spawn right to those RTs.
yeah but cavern is the contest between cave and repair, it's meant to be a 'dodgy one'. crusher is meant to be between sorting and cave, but it's equidistant to repair room and the most direct route for aliens is through a skulk liquefier.
Then just close the entrance to cart tunnel, make it easier to get into crusher from cavern? marines have to go through central or cavern to get there then. No more direct path. You cant bring it all the way back to North tunnels, it becomes a free RT then.
Then just close the entrance to cart tunnel, make it easier to get into crusher from cavern? marines have to go through central or cavern to get there then. No more direct path. You cant bring it all the way back to North tunnels, it becomes a free RT then.
see my above post about the standard topology. crusher SHOULD be a pseudo 'free' RT.
it seems that the mapper is assuming that alien must have crusher and cavern, without taking into account that a single marine can dedicate himself to kamikaze on them throughout the entire game, meanwhile the other marines focus on pressuring central/deposit.
it sucks for marines too... if noone else is doing it, then my 'role' as a marine on mineshaft is constantly to phase/spawn in repair and repeatedly suicide onto crusher/cavern until they die. probably killing them each 5+ times OR distracting 2-3 alien players (which means they have to surrender deposit/central and lose the long game).
i don't mean to disrespect the mapper. i love the aesthetics and general layout of mineshaft, but the balance is an utter facepalm
edit: ns2stats shows alien win rate of ~52% on all maps except mineshaft, which is almost 60% marine win rate (since b243), and only a tiny proportion of those wins are due to ARC-sieging deposit from central. it's the biggest map imbalance aside from overpowered locker room start on docking (whichever team starts in locker room has a >55% chance to win). if you start effectively in the centre of the map like locker rooms, then you already have control over the centre and can easily secure the safe half of the map - regardless of opponent start location.
I still think that nerfing marines at this point is a bad descision. Give the skulk some acceleration back if marines are winning too much, we dont want to go back and fourth nerfing both teams.
haters gonna hate, flamers ->flame , buggers-> bug and so on ... let them talk (its the internet^^)
i´m enjoying the community and the game for about 11 years now.
and i like it for its uniqueness and because its like no other game, you cant compare it to some AAA titles.
ns1 took nearly 3-4 years to balance. and even now some think its not.
just play ! and let UWE do the work.(playing gives them info. crying in the forums does not)
They have gone through so much and take some serious risk to bring you one of the coolest games in the last 15 years.
Makes me wonder why the fix for Shade Ink vs ARCs hasn't been included in the official patch yet. After all it's been working in the Balance mod for quite a while already, or is there still a problem with it?
I just find it incredibly frustrating to lose entire bases just because ink is not working correctly - even if you spam it every time as soon as the button is available again, the marines can still manage to sneak a scan in that will cause all ARCs to instantly devastate the Hive regardless of ink.
Or would "unARCable" bases be considered too alien-favored to be included right away before the finals? :>
Makes me wonder why the fix for Shade Ink vs ARCs hasn't been included in the official patch yet. After all it's been working in the Balance mod for quite a while already, or is there still a problem with it?
I just find it incredibly frustrating to lose entire bases just because ink is not working correctly - even if you spam it every time as soon as the button is available again, the marines can still manage to sneak a scan in that will cause all ARCs to instantly devastate the Hive regardless of ink.
Or would "unARCable" bases be considered too alien-favored to be included right away before the finals? :>
it doesn't work?
i'm sure i've heard some comp strategies using shade as second hive because of ink, so i assumed it was fixed.
i'm sure i've heard some comp strategies using shade as second hive because of ink, so i assumed it was fixed.
It works if you are lucky and keep spamming the Ink button to block any potential scan that might go down on the Hive before the marine commander actually performs the scan. If he manages to catch you just one second with a scan between inking, the ARCs will simply get two free shots off regardless of any ink after that.
The Balance mod has this fixed in that it stops the ARCs from firing even after they acquired a target via scan, so it really forces marines to move into the Hive area and kill the Shade before they can ARC it instead of waiting for a lucky moment.
You may argue if the vanilla Ink is working as intended and the Balance mod version would just be an addition, but to me the vanilla version is pretty broken in it's purpose.
I hate how the arcs still fire if they get a lock, because they ALWAYS get a lock, 0.1 second of not firing is needed to acquire a lock, and with the cooldown on ink it WILL get it eventually. That said, as it is, ink will slow down the arcs a bit.
Makes me wonder why the fix for Shade Ink vs ARCs hasn't been included in the official patch yet. After all it's been working in the Balance mod for quite a while already, or is there still a problem with it?
I just find it incredibly frustrating to lose entire bases just because ink is not working correctly - even if you spam it every time as soon as the button is available again, the marines can still manage to sneak a scan in that will cause all ARCs to instantly devastate the Hive regardless of ink.
Or would "unARCable" bases be considered too alien-favored to be included right away before the finals? :>
it doesn't work?
i'm sure i've heard some comp strategies using shade as second hive because of ink, so i assumed it was fixed.
Loving 244 and I am finding the balance to be great atm. Life forms and Marines all feel good to play and I am finding this build hard to fault. I am a little concerned that Charlie has passed over the lead on balance to someone else. No disrespect but I hope Charlie has the final say on any changes as it feels good now and any major changes would be detrimental to the game at this point imo. I would be happy with just regular new maps and map tweaks as it stands now.
Loving 244 and I am finding the balance to be great atm. Life forms and Marines all feel good to play and I am finding this build hard to fault. I am a little concerned that Charlie has passed over the lead on balance to someone else. No disrespect but I hope Charlie has the final say on any changes as it feels good now and any major changes would be detrimental to the game at this point imo. I would be happy with just regular new maps and map tweaks as it stands now.
Congrats UW.
Sal
Maybe he felt balance was good enough to let someone else handle it while he works on thinking about the future of UWE and a new game. NS2 cannot hold them forever I suppose. But yea I do not think all the mechanics really needed changing with the exception of a select few that has common complaints.
I played for a few hours last night, and I think I'm not very happy. I'll have to give it some more time to know for sure, but coming off of several months with the game heavily favoring aliens and being told these changes are primarily in support of competitive play leaves a sour feeling in my stomach.
Hooray for fixing the microphone and crash bugs! As everyone else has pointed out, the new scoreboard font is awful.
I have also noticed, as someone else mentioned, the atmospherics seem out of control now. The lighting glare was especially bad, it was actually giving me a bit of a headache and made it really hard to spot and track aliens, so big thumbs down to whatever changed there.
I also experienced the 'asset loading' micro stutter / pauses that were mentioned. Will have to see if these persist every session, may have been a fluke.
Probably the biggest change that bothers me is nerfing nanoshields without first addressing power nodes. It costs 5 bloody resources a pop, and as an alien I still found I could usually kill whatever got shielded anyway. Now just find something else to do for 3 seconds and resume murder. Power nodes are the most frustrating / broken problem in the game right now in my opinion, and instead of addressing it we get changes that exacerbate it and make marine play (and especially economy) more unforgiving in general.
It seemed like the balance was finally getting better, I hope this isn't a regression.
Why would anyone expect balance to improve given the current design direction is "whack a lot of shit on a test mod and then pick whatever seems to work". I don't understand why Charlie has given up the balance reins. Balance may have been bad (especially after 239), but random changes to everything are one step worse.
The obvious explanation is that they're probably going to be focusing on a new project before long.
Erm... wut? This is wrong on so many levels...
Meh. Nevermind. Haters gonna hate...
On a completely other topic: Is it possible that the old "crags self-heal to fast"-bug is back? I had some really weird health-bar behavior on crags when shooting / axing them. Looked like the health didn't go down at all or jumped back up a whole lot while firing at it. Is there a known bug?
Games routinely have one or more AFK players with no mechanism for them to be removed from teams. THAT'S a bigger balance issue than anything else I've noticed in 244. It cheapens the whole experience, whether you're winning or losing. This game needs a votekick function like every other multiplayer game has.
Games routinely have one or more AFK players with no mechanism for them to be removed from teams. THAT'S a bigger balance issue than anything else I've noticed in 244. It cheapens the whole experience, whether you're winning or losing. This game needs a votekick function like every other multiplayer game has.
there are server mods to auto-kick idle players. we just need more admins to start using them.
also, i can't think of any games which have in-built votekick. in counterstrike and tf2 they're unofficial iirc.
Games routinely have one or more AFK players with no mechanism for them to be removed from teams. THAT'S a bigger balance issue than anything else I've noticed in 244. It cheapens the whole experience, whether you're winning or losing. This game needs a votekick function like every other multiplayer game has.
On a completely other topic: Is it possible that the old "crags self-heal to fast"-bug is back? I had some really weird health-bar behavior on crags when shooting / axing them. Looked like the health didn't go down at all or jumped back up a whole lot while firing at it. Is there a known bug?
Might be replication issues related to your network connection.
Then just close the entrance to cart tunnel, make it easier to get into crusher from cavern? marines have to go through central or cavern to get there then. No more direct path. You cant bring it all the way back to North tunnels, it becomes a free RT then.
see my above post about the standard topology. crusher SHOULD be a pseudo 'free' RT.
it seems that the mapper is assuming that alien must have crusher and cavern, without taking into account that a single marine can dedicate himself to kamikaze on them throughout the entire game, meanwhile the other marines focus on pressuring central/deposit.
it sucks for marines too... if noone else is doing it, then my 'role' as a marine on mineshaft is constantly to phase/spawn in repair and repeatedly suicide onto crusher/cavern until they die. probably killing them each 5+ times OR distracting 2-3 alien players (which means they have to surrender deposit/central and lose the long game).
i don't mean to disrespect the mapper. i love the aesthetics and general layout of mineshaft, but the balance is an utter facepalm
edit: ns2stats shows alien win rate of ~52% on all maps except mineshaft, which is almost 60% marine win rate (since b243), and only a tiny proportion of those wins are due to ARC-sieging deposit from central. it's the biggest map imbalance aside from overpowered locker room start on docking (whichever team starts in locker room has a >55% chance to win). if you start effectively in the centre of the map like locker rooms, then you already have control over the centre and can easily secure the safe half of the map - regardless of opponent start location.
You make it sound much worse than it is (facepalm?). The original layout of the map definitely didn't play out well, so the idea was to make as many small changes to the map as possible to improve it in its current form. An awesome mapper took the time to try to improve the map while minimizing any delay on working on new maps. We did a run through with maptesters and gathered all the changes we could. The Repair<->Cave side of the map is still an issue, but I would definitely argue that the overall play of the map has improved drastically.
NS2stats is not a reliable source for 244 game at this time. The mineshaft games currently recorded is laughable at under 50. Stop referencing ns2stats for map balance, please!
Oh and the crusher does suck, but as an iconic piece of the map probably won't be removed. Hopefully a small improvement can come to that soon!
Every time people mention how bad mineshaft is I always remember the previous incarnations. This map while still unbalanced has come a VERY long way and I want to thank the mappers (not sure if it is still just Barlow or not) and the testers for continuing to put time into it build after build instead of just giving up. Despite it's problems it can still be really fun to play on in public matches.
Then just close the entrance to cart tunnel, make it easier to get into crusher from cavern? marines have to go through central or cavern to get there then. No more direct path. You cant bring it all the way back to North tunnels, it becomes a free RT then.
see my above post about the standard topology. crusher SHOULD be a pseudo 'free' RT.
it seems that the mapper is assuming that alien must have crusher and cavern, without taking into account that a single marine can dedicate himself to kamikaze on them throughout the entire game, meanwhile the other marines focus on pressuring central/deposit.
it sucks for marines too... if noone else is doing it, then my 'role' as a marine on mineshaft is constantly to phase/spawn in repair and repeatedly suicide onto crusher/cavern until they die. probably killing them each 5+ times OR distracting 2-3 alien players (which means they have to surrender deposit/central and lose the long game).
i don't mean to disrespect the mapper. i love the aesthetics and general layout of mineshaft, but the balance is an utter facepalm
edit: ns2stats shows alien win rate of ~52% on all maps except mineshaft, which is almost 60% marine win rate (since b243), and only a tiny proportion of those wins are due to ARC-sieging deposit from central. it's the biggest map imbalance aside from overpowered locker room start on docking (whichever team starts in locker room has a >55% chance to win). if you start effectively in the centre of the map like locker rooms, then you already have control over the centre and can easily secure the safe half of the map - regardless of opponent start location.
You make it sound much worse than it is (facepalm?). The original layout of the map definitely didn't play out well, so the idea was to make as many small changes to the map as possible to improve it in its current form. An awesome mapper took the time to try to improve the map while minimizing any delay on working on new maps. We did a run through with maptesters and gathered all the changes we could. The Repair<->Cave side of the map is still an issue, but I would definitely argue that the overall play of the map has improved drastically.
NS2stats is not a reliable source for 244 game at this time. The mineshaft games currently recorded is laughable at under 50. Stop referencing ns2stats for map balance, please!
Oh and the crusher does suck, but as an iconic piece of the map probably won't be removed. Hopefully a small improvement can come to that soon!
sorting is worse than cave imo.
if you spawn in sorting your choices are to either run a marathon through north tunnels or exit through the unholy chokepoint of conveyor/brew room. sorting basically funnels the rookie players into desposit, which is a death trap.
i would like to see the result of turning brew room into a bigger room with a door connecting to the lower area of sorting. to give another avenue of attack. right now, a few marines peeping out of deposit can prevent skulks leaving sorting, or force them to use crusher/north tunnels exit.
I think we'll be seeing a bit more Gorge tunnels with the res reduction. Can't wait to see how it plays out. Definitely going to be harder to take down with the armor upgrade but it's all the more satisfying if I can nullify some aliens in the process.
"The Balance mod has this fixed in that it stops the ARCs from firing even after they acquired a target via scan, so it really forces marines to move into the Hive area and kill the Shade before they can ARC it instead of waiting for a lucky moment."
Does the balance Mod now account for the fact Arcs seem to fire on Marine Sight?
Comments
On the contrary, the changes were made purely for public play. Can you be more specific in your thoughts about it?
in my experience it's stupidly hard to attack deposit and central drilling, and crusher seems like the most pathetically vulnerable RT location ever (and you might as well never build it). if you spawn in cave/sorting, where exactly can you go? there are massive shooting range corridors in every direction with no cover to coordinate a group attack.
imo the brew room and crusher need big changes to make them more alien friendly.... and move stupid crusher RT back to north tunnels (or remove one of the RT's from central to make it less of a priority).
crusher is meant to be the alien's RT alternative to 'the gap' (judged by standard map RT topology)... but it's so close to repair room that marines can easily kill both that and cavern RT's with absolutely no pres invested.
Cavern RT is now easier to kill than Crusher. its closer to Repair than Crusher even. The problem isn't with the crusher room, its Cart Tunnel. Its this straight hallway that goes from Marine spawn right to those RTs.
Downloading mods
VAC Enabled
Starting download of 'NSL Tram'
Download of 'NSL Tram' complete
Finished downloading and installing mods
Error: Mod wasn't available
Error: Mod wasn't available
Error: Mod wasn't available
Would be funny to watch live stream (Invinational) when server can't load current NSL map and every one disconnects or ns2stats/cross spawns wont work etc.. Its just random, sometimes it works
Maybe just steamworks shop problem dunno
yeah but cavern is the contest between cave and repair, it's meant to be a 'dodgy one'. crusher is meant to be between sorting and cave, but it's equidistant to repair room and the most direct route for aliens is through a skulk liquefier.
yeah i tapped into my pub server emotional experience, and have been redacting my post for 10 minutes :P
basically, mineshaft doesn't obide by the standard topology:
tram = ore processing (RT), warehouse (TP), platform (RT), server (TP) etc
alien mineshaft = conveyor (no RT), sorting (TP), north tunnel (no RT), cave (TP) etc
marine mineshaft = gap (RT), operations (TP), pilot (RT), repair (TP) etc
where is the balance?
edit: veil doesn't have a symmetrical topology, but each side has 3 'easy' RT's and that leaves overlook, c12 and nano as the contested points. refinery, like mineshaft, has a missing RT between pipework and containment; unsurprising that many people feel that refinery is an unbalanced map as well.
Then just close the entrance to cart tunnel, make it easier to get into crusher from cavern? marines have to go through central or cavern to get there then. No more direct path. You cant bring it all the way back to North tunnels, it becomes a free RT then.
see my above post about the standard topology. crusher SHOULD be a pseudo 'free' RT.
it seems that the mapper is assuming that alien must have crusher and cavern, without taking into account that a single marine can dedicate himself to kamikaze on them throughout the entire game, meanwhile the other marines focus on pressuring central/deposit.
it sucks for marines too... if noone else is doing it, then my 'role' as a marine on mineshaft is constantly to phase/spawn in repair and repeatedly suicide onto crusher/cavern until they die. probably killing them each 5+ times OR distracting 2-3 alien players (which means they have to surrender deposit/central and lose the long game).
i don't mean to disrespect the mapper. i love the aesthetics and general layout of mineshaft, but the balance is an utter facepalm
edit: ns2stats shows alien win rate of ~52% on all maps except mineshaft, which is almost 60% marine win rate (since b243), and only a tiny proportion of those wins are due to ARC-sieging deposit from central. it's the biggest map imbalance aside from overpowered locker room start on docking (whichever team starts in locker room has a >55% chance to win). if you start effectively in the centre of the map like locker rooms, then you already have control over the centre and can easily secure the safe half of the map - regardless of opponent start location.
i´m enjoying the community and the game for about 11 years now.
and i like it for its uniqueness and because its like no other game, you cant compare it to some AAA titles.
ns1 took nearly 3-4 years to balance. and even now some think its not.
just play ! and let UWE do the work.(playing gives them info. crying in the forums does not)
They have gone through so much and take some serious risk to bring you one of the coolest games in the last 15 years.
sorry for beeing a "fanboy" : )
keep up the great work !
I just find it incredibly frustrating to lose entire bases just because ink is not working correctly - even if you spam it every time as soon as the button is available again, the marines can still manage to sneak a scan in that will cause all ARCs to instantly devastate the Hive regardless of ink.
Or would "unARCable" bases be considered too alien-favored to be included right away before the finals? :>
it doesn't work?
i'm sure i've heard some comp strategies using shade as second hive because of ink, so i assumed it was fixed.
It works if you are lucky and keep spamming the Ink button to block any potential scan that might go down on the Hive before the marine commander actually performs the scan. If he manages to catch you just one second with a scan between inking, the ARCs will simply get two free shots off regardless of any ink after that.
The Balance mod has this fixed in that it stops the ARCs from firing even after they acquired a target via scan, so it really forces marines to move into the Hive area and kill the Shade before they can ARC it instead of waiting for a lucky moment.
You may argue if the vanilla Ink is working as intended and the Balance mod version would just be an addition, but to me the vanilla version is pretty broken in it's purpose.
That's because silence is op.
Congrats UW.
Sal
Maybe he felt balance was good enough to let someone else handle it while he works on thinking about the future of UWE and a new game. NS2 cannot hold them forever I suppose. But yea I do not think all the mechanics really needed changing with the exception of a select few that has common complaints.
I played for a few hours last night, and I think I'm not very happy. I'll have to give it some more time to know for sure, but coming off of several months with the game heavily favoring aliens and being told these changes are primarily in support of competitive play leaves a sour feeling in my stomach.
Hooray for fixing the microphone and crash bugs! As everyone else has pointed out, the new scoreboard font is awful.
I have also noticed, as someone else mentioned, the atmospherics seem out of control now. The lighting glare was especially bad, it was actually giving me a bit of a headache and made it really hard to spot and track aliens, so big thumbs down to whatever changed there.
I also experienced the 'asset loading' micro stutter / pauses that were mentioned. Will have to see if these persist every session, may have been a fluke.
Probably the biggest change that bothers me is nerfing nanoshields without first addressing power nodes. It costs 5 bloody resources a pop, and as an alien I still found I could usually kill whatever got shielded anyway. Now just find something else to do for 3 seconds and resume murder. Power nodes are the most frustrating / broken problem in the game right now in my opinion, and instead of addressing it we get changes that exacerbate it and make marine play (and especially economy) more unforgiving in general.
It seemed like the balance was finally getting better, I hope this isn't a regression.
The obvious explanation is that they're probably going to be focusing on a new project before long.
Meh. Nevermind. Haters gonna hate...
On a completely other topic: Is it possible that the old "crags self-heal to fast"-bug is back? I had some really weird health-bar behavior on crags when shooting / axing them. Looked like the health didn't go down at all or jumped back up a whole lot while firing at it. Is there a known bug?
there are server mods to auto-kick idle players. we just need more admins to start using them.
also, i can't think of any games which have in-built votekick. in counterstrike and tf2 they're unofficial iirc.
Might be replication issues related to your network connection.
You make it sound much worse than it is (facepalm?). The original layout of the map definitely didn't play out well, so the idea was to make as many small changes to the map as possible to improve it in its current form. An awesome mapper took the time to try to improve the map while minimizing any delay on working on new maps. We did a run through with maptesters and gathered all the changes we could. The Repair<->Cave side of the map is still an issue, but I would definitely argue that the overall play of the map has improved drastically.
NS2stats is not a reliable source for 244 game at this time. The mineshaft games currently recorded is laughable at under 50. Stop referencing ns2stats for map balance, please!
Oh and the crusher does suck, but as an iconic piece of the map probably won't be removed. Hopefully a small improvement can come to that soon!
sorting is worse than cave imo.
if you spawn in sorting your choices are to either run a marathon through north tunnels or exit through the unholy chokepoint of conveyor/brew room. sorting basically funnels the rookie players into desposit, which is a death trap.
i would like to see the result of turning brew room into a bigger room with a door connecting to the lower area of sorting. to give another avenue of attack. right now, a few marines peeping out of deposit can prevent skulks leaving sorting, or force them to use crusher/north tunnels exit.
aliens are just trapped right from the start :P
Does the balance Mod now account for the fact Arcs seem to fire on Marine Sight?