whips need to knock back grenades. or grendaes need to be dual exo expensive since theyre taking down bases at what seems like the same level as an exo...at least in every alien game ive commanded
I've seen it happen tons of times, it seems to be when the structure is
a) near a crag
b) Directly near a hive (where you'd receive healing radius)
I'm assuming the structure is being healed (why it seems invincible) and not showing the healing effect or displaying the HP going back upwards, just showing it taking regular damage while it's actually being healed
Just lost nearly all eggs(one fadeegg and one gorgeegg) to one marine with GL -.- pls give something else the abbility to throw back or to destroy grenades, maybe hydras?
Had a strange sound loop happen last night. We had a couple ARCs in double on Mineshaft and they were deployed and trying to fire but not actually firing. It was that weird sound they make when they aren't targeting anything.
Well at that time a gorge came in a biled them to death but the failed firing sound contined to loop over and over again.
Found a clipping bug which wasn't 100 build there I guess, right @dux?
I've made a video because explaining the exact position and shooting direction would be difficult. What I didn't do in this video is going further towards the coolant pipes, which would show an invisible obstacle I couldn't go through straightly. Also the LMG doesn't seem to be influenced by this bug but you can try it out yourself.
*Disclaimer*
Fraps eats a lot of frames while recording. I have 60FPS+ constantly while not in action and not recording.
*Disclaimer*
EDIT: Reloaded the map, bug disappeared? Awkward!:-O Oh well!
And what about planning a real 3D player model on the marines side ? It's not much important, but seing the placement of the legs/feet could be useful sometimes..
I'm on an old phenom 2 x4 @ 4ghz and the performance improvement from this patch has been great. Many thanks
No good numbers for you, but late game I would usually drop down to the 40 fps range (on an 18 man server) and down to the 20s and sometimes the 10s on a 32 man server. I haven't tested the 32 man server yet, but I have yet to drop below 60 on my normal 18 man server. I'll edit this post again when I run a test later today.
Why, just why can't you guarantee a certain level of stability in this game.
Because there's an endless amount of different configurations of systems that people are playing on. Totally different specs, totally different conflicting software running, a multitude of reasons why the game might run great for some people and not as well for others. Its the nature of PC gaming. We do the best we can to make the game run well for as many players as possible, but at the end of the day the only real way to guarantee perfect stability for all players is to make a game for a console.
*Fixed quote tag - Angelusz*
Out of interest Cory, what is the team's approach to tech support? I know this kind of comment is frustrating, and your explanation is fair, but it might also be reassuring for the customers to hear what's being done to improve compatibility issues going forward. For example, I'd find it reassuring if part of the dev response was: 'What are your system specs?' or 'If you write us up a post with a DxDiag in this forum one of the team will get back to you.'
It was fine to use GetSatisfaction during Alpha and Beta for tracking feedback, but now your product is released I think UWE could be doing more to engage with customers who are having issues with the product. In fact, as of now I cannot find any concrete link since the site revamp to a place where I can expect to receive technical support. A Tech Support forum would allow you to amalgamate details on similar-sounding issues, engage directly with your customers, gain an understanding of the proliferation of a technical issue, share workarounds and provide reassurance. I strongly suggest you open one up. I think you'll find that once you provide this space the community will be more than prepared to help police the forum to keep the standard of bug reporting high (e.g. give advice on what sort of information to provide and how to get it) and also in some cases be able to provide a basic level of tech support so you can focus on the nitty gritty.
The fact I just briefly looked for this forum and gave up (never thinking to look in 'Getting Started') shows how well hidden it is.
This is just a symptom of what I ranted about when this site and forums were redesigned. It's a horrible user experience. Just look at that breadcrumb:
Google Natural Selection 2 > Select 'Visit the Full Site' > Forums > Getting Started > Technical Support
A few points on this process, to explain why I think it desperately needs improving:
Getting to Tech Support is at least 4 clicks (assuming you randomly stumble through that unintuitive set of links)
If you Google "natural selection 2 tech support" the first-page results do not feature the Tech Support Forums link. This is a symptom of how badly signposted it is. Stick a button on the .com page and label it 'Natural Selection 2 Tech Support' and I guarantee you'll increase the amount of traffic reaching the Tech Support forum substantially.
At every stage of that user flow the user has to make an unintuitive link selection to progress in the right direction:
From the .com I have to press a button to 'visit the full site'. Why am I not already at the full site? This gate only serves new buyers, it holds no value to existing customers.
Once at the full site, to get to 'Tech Support' I need to visit the forums. Or, since I need some guidance with the game, should I go to 'Game Guide'? Or, perhaps the community will help me, so I'll go to 'Community'. Too many options for something as crucial as tech support.
Once on the Forums landing page, I need to click 'Just Getting Started'. While the majority of tech support issues will surface within the first hour of playing a game for the first time, you have an evolving product, which means there's plenty of opportunity for new issues to crop up because of some update. 'Just Getting Started' is an extremely leading statement that most people who have played for more than a week will no longer think applies to them. Hiding the Tech Support forum behind this statement is borderline criminal in terms of UX design.
Here's another bad example of how to get to Tech Support from indie dev 2D Boy. It's 4 clicks, but I'm not going to tell you the route. Just try to get to Tech Support yourself and see how frustrating it is.
Some examples of this done well (I included indie devs to show you don't need a huge team to make this work effectively):
Naughty Dog - 2 clicks to Last of Us 'Technical Questions' Mojang - 2 click to product-specific 'Help' Telltale Games - 1 click to 'Support' The Behemoth - 1 click to 'Support' Frictional Games - 1 click to 'Support' Introversion Software - 1 click to 'Support'
Why is this such a big deal? Because when a customer can't get their game to work, they complain to the developer, perhaps in a place where that bug report isn't' going to be picked up by the person whose responsibility it is to escalate this sort of thing. If the developer doesn't respond to them, either by fixing the issue quickly or by replying to them directly, they stop playing. It's that simple. Not only do they stop playing, but they tell their friends not to get the game because it's 'buggy and it didn't work on my PC'. Helping players to enjoy the experience you created on their hardware is important and a lot of the time it's not actually very difficult to get this feedback loop working well.
Measure the traffic before and after, I almost guarantee that you'll see an improvement if you reduce it to a 1 or 2 click (and intuitive) process. Better quality of information, more stats to help substantiate or rule our hypotheses, and ultimately a better game with happier customers, which translates to a larger active playerbase, a longer tail to your active playerbase falloff and more sales for the company!
Finally, here are some other things you can do to improve the Tech Support process for your current and future games:
Add some (intuitive) indicator that shows when a developer has responded to a post. This focuses people's attention on the threads you want them to be reading. It means you're less likely to get 100 different posts for 1 issue and it means you don't have to ask for a DxDiag every time a new person reports this elusive issue.
Show stickies on every forum results page. Stickies are important. Why, when you navigate to page 2 of a forum, would the sticky suddenly become unimportant? In a forum like Tech Support where your past day of updates will easily stretch over 3 pages, this makes no sense at all. It decreases the likelihood that someone will read your guidelines before making a post, meaning you're increasing your own workload.
Write some issue reporting guidelines and sticky them. This is so fundamental I can't believe it hasn't been done. You are asking for vague reports that you have to chase up if you don't tell people what your expectations are. This also means your forum community do not have the tools required to help you enforce this policy.
I have returned back to the game after a month or so (it started to cause too much frustration and in short, it drove me nuts).
From technical standpoint, the game feels just marvelous now. The everpresent input lag we experienced before seems to be diminished greatly, the fps drops are no longer severe. The game is stable, it runs very well.
The core problem on pubs (I don't have access anywhere else), however, remains - balanced matches where players do more or less do meaningful things, communicate and adapt, are sadly very rare. Even a talking commander is a blessing seldom seen. Also, the player count and active server count seems to have diminished noticeably - the game seems to be suffering from player exodus.
Balance still needs work, especially those still-not-very-useful features like sentries, rifle bash, babblers, etc.
Comments
a) near a crag
b) Directly near a hive (where you'd receive healing radius)
I'm assuming the structure is being healed (why it seems invincible) and not showing the healing effect or displaying the HP going back upwards, just showing it taking regular damage while it's actually being healed
Nowhere near a Crag of Hive (and no Crag could save a hydra against 3 ARs).
Good luck PTs
Well at that time a gorge came in a biled them to death but the failed firing sound contined to loop over and over again.
I've made a video because explaining the exact position and shooting direction would be difficult. What I didn't do in this video is going further towards the coolant pipes, which would show an invisible obstacle I couldn't go through straightly. Also the LMG doesn't seem to be influenced by this bug but you can try it out yourself.
*Disclaimer*
Fraps eats a lot of frames while recording. I have 60FPS+ constantly while not in action and not recording.
*Disclaimer*
EDIT: Reloaded the map, bug disappeared? Awkward!:-O Oh well!
No...
I still can't enjoy commander with an AZERTY keyboard. What a shame in the year 2013 !
No good numbers for you, but late game I would usually drop down to the 40 fps range (on an 18 man server) and down to the 20s and sometimes the 10s on a 32 man server. I haven't tested the 32 man server yet, but I have yet to drop below 60 on my normal 18 man server. I'll edit this post again when I run a test later today.
It was fine to use GetSatisfaction during Alpha and Beta for tracking feedback, but now your product is released I think UWE could be doing more to engage with customers who are having issues with the product. In fact, as of now I cannot find any concrete link since the site revamp to a place where I can expect to receive technical support. A Tech Support forum would allow you to amalgamate details on similar-sounding issues, engage directly with your customers, gain an understanding of the proliferation of a technical issue, share workarounds and provide reassurance. I strongly suggest you open one up. I think you'll find that once you provide this space the community will be more than prepared to help police the forum to keep the standard of bug reporting high (e.g. give advice on what sort of information to provide and how to get it) and also in some cases be able to provide a basic level of tech support so you can focus on the nitty gritty.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/categories/technical-support
The fact I just briefly looked for this forum and gave up (never thinking to look in 'Getting Started') shows how well hidden it is.
This is just a symptom of what I ranted about when this site and forums were redesigned. It's a horrible user experience. Just look at that breadcrumb:
Google Natural Selection 2 > Select 'Visit the Full Site' > Forums > Getting Started > Technical Support
A few points on this process, to explain why I think it desperately needs improving:
Here's another bad example of how to get to Tech Support from indie dev 2D Boy. It's 4 clicks, but I'm not going to tell you the route. Just try to get to Tech Support yourself and see how frustrating it is.
Some examples of this done well (I included indie devs to show you don't need a huge team to make this work effectively):
Naughty Dog - 2 clicks to Last of Us 'Technical Questions'
Mojang - 2 click to product-specific 'Help'
Telltale Games - 1 click to 'Support'
The Behemoth - 1 click to 'Support'
Frictional Games - 1 click to 'Support'
Introversion Software - 1 click to 'Support'
Why is this such a big deal? Because when a customer can't get their game to work, they complain to the developer, perhaps in a place where that bug report isn't' going to be picked up by the person whose responsibility it is to escalate this sort of thing. If the developer doesn't respond to them, either by fixing the issue quickly or by replying to them directly, they stop playing. It's that simple. Not only do they stop playing, but they tell their friends not to get the game because it's 'buggy and it didn't work on my PC'. Helping players to enjoy the experience you created on their hardware is important and a lot of the time it's not actually very difficult to get this feedback loop working well.
Measure the traffic before and after, I almost guarantee that you'll see an improvement if you reduce it to a 1 or 2 click (and intuitive) process. Better quality of information, more stats to help substantiate or rule our hypotheses, and ultimately a better game with happier customers, which translates to a larger active playerbase, a longer tail to your active playerbase falloff and more sales for the company!
Finally, here are some other things you can do to improve the Tech Support process for your current and future games:
Add some (intuitive) indicator that shows when a developer has responded to a post. This focuses people's attention on the threads you want them to be reading. It means you're less likely to get 100 different posts for 1 issue and it means you don't have to ask for a DxDiag every time a new person reports this elusive issue.
Show stickies on every forum results page. Stickies are important. Why, when you navigate to page 2 of a forum, would the sticky suddenly become unimportant? In a forum like Tech Support where your past day of updates will easily stretch over 3 pages, this makes no sense at all. It decreases the likelihood that someone will read your guidelines before making a post, meaning you're increasing your own workload.
Write some issue reporting guidelines and sticky them. This is so fundamental I can't believe it hasn't been done. You are asking for vague reports that you have to chase up if you don't tell people what your expectations are. This also means your forum community do not have the tools required to help you enforce this policy.
P.S. Next time I'm going to charge.
Nice save.
That's why I use this link to view the forums. I hate the default style.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/categories
From technical standpoint, the game feels just marvelous now. The everpresent input lag we experienced before seems to be diminished greatly, the fps drops are no longer severe. The game is stable, it runs very well.
The core problem on pubs (I don't have access anywhere else), however, remains - balanced matches where players do more or less do meaningful things, communicate and adapt, are sadly very rare. Even a talking commander is a blessing seldom seen. Also, the player count and active server count seems to have diminished noticeably - the game seems to be suffering from player exodus.
Balance still needs work, especially those still-not-very-useful features like sentries, rifle bash, babblers, etc.
I just keep all the boards that interest me open in tabs...