JektJoin Date: 2012-02-05Member: 143714Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Agree on infestation. It's pretty buggy and spreads through walls and gaps in the map. A cyst near a wall in nano spreads into the junctions for example. It would be great if minimal infestation was fixed to not be a hideous patchy mess also. Whenever there's time, it is the crowning jewel of NS2 game play after all.
Also, the importance of an overhauled interactive tutorial system live in time for a game relaunch can't be overstated enough. Confusion is such a huge factor in the average player retention for this game.
Except one thing: I don't think the problem is that UWE takes their info from the forums (after all, they have their game stats thingie and everything).
I believe they are just so entrenched in their idea/decision of how to evolve the game (using competitive as a benchmark) that they don't "get" things that are pretty obvious to more pub minded people. The Gorgeous Skulk nerf is the the most glaring example.
I don't know if this applies to anyone else, but at this point I'm more looking for general patterns and directions rather than a direct changelist. The changelist is definitely good and nice too, but at this point it speak quite little to me.
NS2 has gone through so many changes that changelists are kind of hard to follow unless you're playing regularly to keep up with the details of the present version. Also, for me the more than occassional lack of visible plan has been one of the biggest annoyances with NS2' progress. When it comes to BT mod, I'm not so much looking for a complete and finalized new gameplay, but an indication that we are heading decisively to a direction of more varied and interesting gameplay.
I was hoping Andi could have a say about the big outlines and direction in the State of the Game, but I don't think it really got realized there. Would it be possible to have something like a list of '5 Big Reasons why I will love the new NS2 gameplay' written down or talked about by Andi somewhere?
The changelist is awesome too, but at this point I'm having considerable problems in finding the patterns from it.
I so wait for this to become the main game, after playing NS Classic and BT, it makes me realize how bad (err... maybe lackluster) NS2 was, both BT and Classic gave the aliens more choice in upgrades and unit composition, for example the way Lerk(Classic) spores worked seems infinitely better.
Another great ability was teleporting between hives or the ability to select between more damage to buildings or player, which adds a bit more depth, not just a one fit for all.
Though since I've used HMG and seen electrified, why was they taking out, with the increased speed of the aliens both seem very necessary now, heavy armor I could take it or leave it.
Also love how there was no Aliens commander games didn't seem to take forever to start, because it's usually the Aliens commander that rarely people want to do, at-least the Marine commander it much more interesting, also liked surprisingly the dictatorial nature of the old Marine commander.
Well about the movement of the BT mod, its a more an alien buff then anything, and there is tonnes of feedback showing that you doing well, the Skulk at the moment makes a noise when you wall jumping properly also when you chain them you get the dog panting noise(maybe something else could be better, but it servers its purpose).
The Lerk servers its support role as it should do, umbra helps the team battles quite a bit, maybe needing some revision but now making umbra more relevant, also the new energy system make sure any Alien can not spam their ability as-well.
Next the Fade, probably the most controversial or isn't once you starting using the new BT one, it's not a nerf, odd to play with because most of us got used to the old Fade, but learning to blink and jump you go ridiculously faster then the old Fade, also most people moan for blink and you get straight away.
Onos, Well the same, no real difference still the super tank.
Another thing are the upgrades Aura is the best, also Regeneration is now useful again, also Celerity has a bigger impact, actually useful, in live Adrenaline wins out, but now in Classic and BT Celerity now has it's merit.
I just wish Focus and such also make it back.
NS1 ideas and NS2 movement(BT) = near perfection.
P.s sorry for the long post, could add more, but I feel this is enough.
I always hypothesized the reasons people quit is often due to the amount of skills it requires to understand the game from the beginning.
This.
There's one thing you can be sure on with the BT mod changes, people who are above average/good will get better and people who are average/below average now will be worse off after it.
Gotta follow that Q3A example straight to the grave tho I guess.
Wow, can't believe the entire "balance test" mod is getting patched over live. I think this is a big mistake.
Stating why would be more productive than this dumb drive by comment.
It's the common drive by trolling, see all over the internet, make a new account, then leave a comment like he/she did.
But on topic, people try to the new mod, I was skeptical, but you realize how making it more NS with BT movement is the way to go.
NS2 vanilla is very shallow in comparison, as I said, tech paths are always the same, also not enough variety for the marines, shotguns and win(or lose, but still always the go-to weapon), adding depth through abilities is the way to go, also this games should push experimental ideas, don't play it safe already losing players.
PLEASE REMEMBER YOUR FORUMS ARE NOT THE PLAYER BASE OF YOUR GAME.
Don't worry about the 'disagrees' on your post Tom. I appreciate your post, I want to hear your thoughts, I want to hear why you don't like these changes, and those of anyone else who feels passionate about all this.
Alright, I may have been a little wasted when I wrote that!.
I still feel this a huge error. I can appreciate UWE are looking to keep this game alive and reel new players in whilst retaining the veterans. Is this really the answer?. It's a huge gamble and from a majority of the players in the game is either a "wth is that?" or "are they serious?" response.
Only a small crowd of people playing the game actually post on these forums for what I see.
My main gripe is the radical change of the game. What's wrong with the current version? Did you really make a huge mistake and this is the answer?. I don't like the idea of core mechanics being re-written, like movement. I don't like the idea of non-logical actions becoming standard for the sake of balance. "i.e MAC's not being able to weld eachother, or scaling on a single structure".
What about the guys who enjoy the game as it is?. Who said everyone is unhappy with the game? Who said it's stale or boring? What makes that true?.
Obviously there are a few individual changes in the BT mod that I'd probably like to see implemented.
I always hypothesized the reasons people quit is often due to the amount of skills it requires to understand the game from the beginning.
This.
There's one thing you can be sure on with the BT mod changes, people who are above average/good will get better and people who are average/below average now will be worse off after it.
Gotta follow that Q3A example straight to the grave tho I guess.
This is my biggest worry. A lot of the changes look really interesting, and I'm in no way opposed to change on principle, but the ones that look like they're going to drastically increase skill gaps are going to have a devastating impact on the game. Massive teamstacking or a single good player carrying entire teams is already a regular occurrence, increasing this gap between average and above-average players even further will make the problem worse.
I think removing the graduated bite cone is a mistake. You're not going to get many unskilled players on the BT servers, so you've probably not gotten much accurate feedback on how the less-skilled players will be impacted by losing the 25 and some of the 50 range.
Actually... all of the casual players I've spoken to agree that playing without glancing bite is far easier and less confusing. Atleast they know when they land a bite it does full damage, compared to the 25/50/75 dice roll they've been experiencing. Additionally I would compare the BT 75 bite width to the vanilla 50 bite width. I believe 75 damage went from 0.3 -> 0.7 (not sure on that)
Weird, because all the casual players I've spoken to (me and my immediate circle of friends) really, really like the graduated cone.
Well, liked. Because I'm the only one who still plays. Because they got sick of the teamstacking and lone-marine-holding-entire-rooms-on-his-own matches and went back to playing games where there's actually a point to them showing up.
Well, I think one of those changes is REALLY gamebreaking and lowering the skill-cap:
-disabled gradual melee attacks.
Having to aim good as an alien is really interesting. That's important to learn how to aim properly as an alien, and not just running/jumping all around while spamming Bite. I personally think this would be a huge mistake, and will make aliens less fun to play... But let's see how the whole change works
I don't think you understand what they meant... the best way I can describe the change is they took the bumpers off the bowling lane, they didn't make the lane bigger. The change actually requires you to aim better now, since the bite-cone is smaller.
Well, from what I have tested, the 25 we're doing today will become 75. Of course I think the game is really to hard for a new player, but this actually making aliens far less fun to play than before. Even when I was a rookie, I never found it hard and confusing to know how much I deal to a marines. I don't think this is really the issue.
Im not sure right now if I should continue playing this game... played the "BT" mod twice and it was horrible, the fade is not worth the 50 res, not even 20. Since PGs can build on creep aliens are unable to do anything against secret PGs. Skulks are more like angry sheeps than deadly Aliens. The aliendefense is still bad(whips are not even worth 2res).
Maybe it´s just my opinion but this game is not fun it´s work
Well true, sneaky PGs wil be horrible...
One another thing, PLEASE YOU DEV'S LISTEN TO ME:
New lerk movements are just HORRIBLE. You have the feeling to be in the space. This is just super hard to stabilize yourself. If you want to spike marines while skulks attack them, you just can't stop moving or you have to spam fly key and getting out of energy. Seriously, this was way better before. When you flap your wings, the direction you are looking to doesn't matter anymore and you continue to fly in the same way. And this is really annoying.
Also, alien's armor is, I think, too bad at the start of the game. You loose your Lerk so fast...If they fast research SGs, well you got barely one shooted even with armor, plus you can't control your movements really well because of what I've explained before.
It should be obvious why it's a mistake. You can't just change the game in such a huge way and hope that it's better. It's relying on a gimmick to get new players in (for the cash) at any cost rather than doing it by providing continuous improvements leading to solid gameplay. The way to solid gameplay is incremental polishing, not by throwing a bunch of changes together and calling it a "balance test" mod, having 10 people play it, and then patching the whole of it over the live build.
Gorgeous was arguably a step backwards even though it was supposed to add new stuff to the game. What solid gameplay changes have actually made it live since then to rectify that? Changing a lot of stuff all at once doesn't work. All that will happen is that some more people will be robbed of some money, realize they got taken, and then not stick around. That and the fact that 90% of the current playerbase will hate having to adapt just builds resentment.
Throwing away the existing gameplay makes the developers look like they know they have a turd on their hands and it isn't worth polishing it. If that's too hard, what makes them think they are somehow going to trade it in in one patch for a golden egg. It doesn't inspire confidence. We're going to end up with a game that is just as fundamentally broken only in different ways, and I guarantee it will be heralded by some PR blather about 50/50 winrates and how "balanced" it is. It's not right guys, and it's certainly not logical.
Some ideas:
1) Ignore comp players, you need to build a community of casual/average players. The comp experiment has failed, it should be clear that any hope NS2 had for being taken seriously as a competitive game is over at this point. Flush that shit already.
2) No more gimmicky plays. No more silly additions that have no real value, like babblers, just so you can throw them on the stupid promo video to get mad cash.
3) Don't overblow the tech changes. LuaJIT gave things a bit of a boost, but it isn't all that because of how Lua/C interop works. OpenGL and DirectX11 aren't gonna do shit, let's stop pretending they are the second coming of ja himself. Flashy tech words do not a game make. Don't bait people with low end systems with stuff that isn't going to help them.
4) Stick with what you have when it works well. The current Fade and Lerk are two such examples. Minor tweaking needed at most. Stuff like drifters building things... what in the hell?!? Where do you come up with this stuff. It's not going to make RTS fans want to play if that's what it is about.
It's funny that you played it once or twice and expect to be good from the start. Lay down your prejudices, give the mod a chance, and learn that the game is way more fun with those changes.
I am also a paying customer, and I've been playing this game since engine test and have been waiting a patch just like this. Sewlek doesn't add many new features, he just takes all the stuff and trys to make them equally viable (or usable at all).
Play the BT mod, and stop the angry customer threats, please.
There is your problem. You play two matches in a completely changed gameplay and expect that you know exactly how everything works right away. It's the same mistake rookies do when they evolve to a Fade, jump in front of a marine, die to his Shotgun and think "omg, this is so bad, this lifeform is super UP".
Don't fall into that trap just because you played vanilla NS2 before. When you join BT, you should have the same expectation that you had when you started playing NS2 as rookie in general.
Ninja PGs were a valid tactic back in NS1 and couldn't really pulled off in that way due to the new infestation in NS2. Marines always had to clear infestation away and make their position known, defeating the point of "ninja". The new changes allow that old tactic to come back. It's not like aliens don't have a home advantage after all: PGs have less HP than they do in vanilla and building structures on infestation is still slower than on normal ground. And if you don't scout the map enough to notice a marine team walking that far into your territory (especially given the increased movement capabilities of Skuls), then you deserve to be struck by that PG. In the end it's an awesome moment for the marine team to pull such a thing off.
Whips are also getting Bile Bomb on their own when they matured and are cheaper too. They do a fine job slowing marines down before entering your Hive and deny any structures to be built in the Hive that way.
@Bacillus: The general intentions of the changes can be outlined as:
- make underused content equally viable as strategy than the other stuff (early Robotics Factory, Flamethrowers, Grenade Launchers, other tech paths than Crag)
- increase the number of strategic decisions and allow for more varied early game tactics (Biomass; all support chambers can be built from the start; Arms Lab no longer requires Armory)
- prolong the early game / make lategame units less powerful and game deciding (since sneaky early game play as Skulk is more fun than just throwing unbeatable Exos and Onos at each other)
- make the gameplay feel more dynamic (reduction of gameplay elements that are not interesting in themselves, like chewing/welding an RT for a minute; more Drifter micromanagement for khammander, so he gets to do something else than just cysting around and clicking buttons; less waiting for things like Drifter or ARC production; ninja PGs; ProtoLab on 1 CC; aliens instantly lose an equipped upgrade when the structure goes down; individual RT ticks)
- make higher tech more accessible to new players (cost reduction of the tech, so you can go Onos even if you didn't save the entire match for it, as well as making it less bad if you lose that investment right away; removal of "No Res While Dead" rule; both upgrades are unlocked by the same upgrade structure for aliens; Biomass reduces the opportunity cost on individual Hive upgrades, so it's more likely that they will be researched anyway and no lifeform is "left behind" by the khammander)
- address some balancing issues (Armory turtling; lack of lategame scaling for alien lifeforms; egg lock on large servers; structure spam on alien side)
- offer new strategies (early Robotics Factory; Echoing Gorge Tunnels; fast Umbra; Flamethrower rush; fast ARCing; fast Jetpacks)
The BT mod has gone through a purging phase already where all ideas that did not address a balance issues or were making the gameplay more fun got phased out.
Really pleased to see a list of changes and some official word on when this is happening, thanks Hugh. I imagine it was a buttload of work putting the changelog together.
Rollmans is really right. Some of the changes are really good, but for most of them...I don't really see the point. After few games, I have doubt about the biomass system. I think it will create more games like "we all know who is gonna win after 3 minutes".
I'm not angry, I'm just wondering if there is real reasons to change things working.
It should be obvious why it's a mistake. You can't just change the game in such a huge way and hope that it's better. It's relying on a gimmick to get new players in (for the cash) at any cost rather than doing it by providing continuous improvements leading to solid gameplay. The way to solid gameplay is incremental polishing, not by throwing a bunch of changes together and calling it a "balance test" mod, having 10 people play it, and then patching the whole of it over the live build.
Gorgeous was arguably a step backwards even though it was supposed to add new stuff to the game. What solid gameplay changes have actually made it live since then to rectify that? Changing a lot of stuff all at once doesn't work. All that will happen is that some more people will be robbed of some money, realize they got taken, and then not stick around. That and the fact that 90% of the current playerbase will hate having to adapt just builds resentment.
Throwing away the existing gameplay makes the developers look like they know they have a turd on their hands and it isn't worth polishing it. If that's too hard, what makes them think they are somehow going to trade it in in one patch for a golden egg. It doesn't inspire confidence. We're going to end up with a game that is just as fundamentally broken only in different ways, and I guarantee it will be heralded by some PR blather about 50/50 winrates and how "balanced" it is. It's not right guys.
I don't even know what to respond to such a post. So much "obvious", so much "fact", so much unfounded hyperbole… it would be cute if it wasn't so sad.
Some ideas:
1) Ignore comp players, you need to build a community of casual/average players. The comp experiment has failed, it should be clear that any hope NS2 had for being taken seriously as a competitive game is over at this point.
2) No more gimmicky plays. No more silly additions that have no real value, like babblers.
3) Don't overblow the tech changes. LuaJIT gave things a bit of a boost, but it isn't all that. OpenGL and DirectX11 aren't gonna do shit, let's stop pretending they are the second coming of ja himself.
1) "Ignore your most active player base, who will still play the game on a regular base after the casual players have abandoned you. Also ignore that casual players eventually become near comp-level players if they stick around long enough." So, who is this ominous judge of whether or not NS2 is taken serious as a comp game? Last time I checked, there are still leagues, prizes and broadcasts of matches.
2) Funnily enough Babblers are used quite a lot by dedicated Gorges in comp play, since they give such a massive boost to a Gorge's life expectancy.
3) "Let's not implement changes that will make the game accessible to a wider audience of players on Unix and Mac systems and eventually enable Unix servers to host the game. Let's also ignore all the performance improvements that can come hand in hand with DX11, for instance the non-mirrored VRAM on 32 bit OS. You should just stop any technical advancement whatsoever, the game is in a good enough state right now."
PLEASE REMEMBER YOUR FORUMS ARE NOT THE PLAYER BASE OF YOUR GAME.
Don't worry about the 'disagrees' on your post Tom. I appreciate your post, I want to hear your thoughts, I want to hear why you don't like these changes, and those of anyone else who feels passionate about all this.
Alright, I may have been a little wasted when I wrote that!.
I still feel this a huge error. I can appreciate UWE are looking to keep this game alive and reel new players in whilst retaining the veterans. Is this really the answer?. It's a huge gamble and from a majority of the players in the game is either a "wth is that?" or "are they serious?" response.
Only a small crowd of people playing the game actually post on these forums for what I see.
My main gripe is the radical change of the game. What's wrong with the current version? Did you really make a huge mistake and this is the answer?. I don't like the idea of core mechanics being re-written, like movement. I don't like the idea of non-logical actions becoming standard for the sake of balance. "i.e MAC's not being able to weld eachother, or scaling on a single structure".
What about the guys who enjoy the game as it is?. Who said everyone is unhappy with the game? Who said it's stale or boring? What makes that true?.
Obviously there are a few individual changes in the BT mod that I'd probably like to see implemented.
The problem is that many of NS2's features are severly underused, while others are overused, which is a shame because it doesn't lead to much variety in tactics.
Look at the marine weapons for instance. The GL and flamethrower are not used very often (even in pub games it's about one of the last things being researched), while shotguns are practically mandatory to have any chance of succes against an equally skilled alien team. BT mod is trying to change this by tweaking the shotgun, and making the GL and flamethrower a bit more useful and easier to access (cheaper to buy, less research costs).
Another example is the alien tech tree. Crag is mandatory because carapace is sooo important, shift is nice to have and a logical choice for second hive because you can use adrenaline for all the second hive abilities, and then there is shade, which is an early game gamble that loses much of it's use mid-late game. This sort of stuff is what makes people say NS2 is stale. So again, BT mod is trying to make all three hive specializations and it's upgrades equally viable.
I wouldn't say it's hit the sweet spot at the moment for said examples, but the intention to increase the viability of underused features in an attempt to increase the overall depth and variety is good, and it's heading in the right direction. The changes aren't meant to cater to a select crowd of veteran ns players, they're meant to make the game better and more enjoyable as a whole, for everyone. It still needs a lot more testing though, so the best you can do is play it often, and give feedback on specific changes.
But give it a real chance before making judgements. The "this is a huge mistake, people will leave NS2 forever" sort of doomsday speak isn't gonna help at all.
Rollmans is really right. Some of the changes are really good, but for most of them...I don't really see the point. After few games, I have doubt about the biomass system. I think it will create more games like "we all know who is gonna win after 3 minutes".
I'm not angry, I'm just wondering if there is real reasons to change things working.
Last time I checked, there are still leagues, prizes and broadcasts of matches.
And not a single fuck was given. Sorry but the NS2 comp scene is so minor as to be worthless for promoting the game. In fact they are making it worse by promoting comp friendly/casual hostile mechanics. It's also never going to go anywhere with even 10x the current playerbase.
3) Let's not implement changes that will make the game accessible to a wider audience of players on Unix and Mac systems and eventually enable Unix servers to host the game
Unix and Mac? It hasn't been accepted by a decent enough amount of Windows users, and those platforms have such a small potential audience it almost isn't worth focusing any effort on.
Let's also ignore all the performance improvements that can come hand in hand with DX11, for instance the non-mirrored VRAM on 32 bit OS. You should just stop any technical advancement whatsoever, the game is in a good enough state right now.
I for one can't wait to see the blistering performance gains resulting from non-mirrored VRAM on a 32 bit OS. See 1.
In terms of making progress, fanboys are almost as bad as comp players.
Im not sure right now if I should continue playing this game... played the "BT" mod twice and it was horrible, the fade is not worth the 50 res, not even 20. Since PGs can build on creep aliens are unable to do anything against secret PGs. Skulks are more like angry sheeps than deadly Aliens. The aliendefense is still bad(whips are not even worth 2res).
Maybe it´s just my opinion but this game is not fun it´s work
The BT Fade is a beast, sure it takes getting use to, but when you do, you're flying around the place at mach speeds, also shadow-step while removed as a starter isn't really missed with the new movement, also when it comes in it gives that extra movement in combat.
About PGs, there easily found and jumped on by the Aliens seeing that every lifeforms moves at a very high speed.
Skulks are also very good, giving one of the active servers running BT, Hiedis or something, has some of the best players on it, the BT Skulk gives you a chance against good shooters, also the increase 75 bite cones helps quite a bit.
Ahh... the fun point of view, this will be a controversial point of view, but this games in essence isn't meant to be fun in your face, it's more interesting and you meant to find the enjoyment in that.
Emphasizing the gap between the two teams. I mean if you lost a Hive, downing from for example level 6 to 2. Every lifeform become weaker and so...less chances to change the game. It was good that you keep your upgrades when the Hive die so you are still powered and have a chance to win. Here, we got a weak Fade a Lerk. I've already talked about the lerk movements, I also don't understand why switching Blink and Shadowstep.
There is also one another thing: marines are reasearching very fast new weaps, jetpacks and exos, and after 10 minutes they have ererything. I personnaly love those start games, with sneaky skulks and few lerks around the field, against marines and their rifle. Here we have underpowered Lerks and Fades (150 armor for fade down to around 80...) against exos SGs jetpacks flamethrowers etc. I don't think this is the fun part of the game, where marines are standing to the entrance waiting for an occasion to push the hive. This is good to promote over weaps than SG, but I think this a bit too much. Everything is available really quick, and the end games on the current versions are not really fun. On the BT servs, you go to these kind of end games really faster.
NS1 had a very positive history of making major changes and the game being more popular as a result. 1.04 -> 2.0 -> 3.0.
Please noobs, continue telling me your experience of BT mod after 1-3 games. I'm sure you will shed light on the mod in some way beneficial with your 'don't do this or i quit attitude.' *snip* -Be nice.
Last time I checked, there are still leagues, prizes and broadcasts of matches.
And not a single fuck was given. Sorry but the NS2 comp scene is so minor as to be worthless for promoting the game. In fact they are making it worse by promoting comp friendly/casual hostile mechanics. It's also never going to go anywhere with even 10x the current playerbase.
3) Let's not implement changes that will make the game accessible to a wider audience of players on Unix and Mac systems and eventually enable Unix servers to host the game
Unix and Mac? It hasn't been accepted by a decent enough amount of Windows users, and those platforms have such a small potential audience it almost isn't worth focusing any effort on.
Let's also ignore all the performance improvements that can come hand in hand with DX11, for instance the non-mirrored VRAM on 32 bit OS. You should just stop any technical advancement whatsoever, the game is in a good enough state right now.
I for one can't wait to see the blistering performance gains resulting from non-mirrored VRAM on a 32 bit OS. See 1.
In terms of making progress, fanboys are almost as bad as comp players.
Ok. Are you now going to back any of your statements up or will you persist on trying to continue a discussion solely based on your subjective opinions?
You keep postulating assumptions about the player demographics and declare them as fact.
It's easy to call me a fanboy just because my opinion is founded on experience from having actually played the BT mod regularly during it's entire development process, rather than creating a drama based solely on a short playthrough and reading a changelog. Ironically are the "fanboys and comp players" all advocating for the game's progress while you are the ones who are currently arguing extremely conservatively about keeping the status quo of the game.
Comments
Also, the importance of an overhauled interactive tutorial system live in time for a game relaunch can't be overstated enough. Confusion is such a huge factor in the average player retention for this game.
Except one thing: I don't think the problem is that UWE takes their info from the forums (after all, they have their game stats thingie and everything).
I believe they are just so entrenched in their idea/decision of how to evolve the game (using competitive as a benchmark) that they don't "get" things that are pretty obvious to more pub minded people. The Gorgeous Skulk nerf is the the most glaring example.
NS2 has gone through so many changes that changelists are kind of hard to follow unless you're playing regularly to keep up with the details of the present version. Also, for me the more than occassional lack of visible plan has been one of the biggest annoyances with NS2' progress. When it comes to BT mod, I'm not so much looking for a complete and finalized new gameplay, but an indication that we are heading decisively to a direction of more varied and interesting gameplay.
I was hoping Andi could have a say about the big outlines and direction in the State of the Game, but I don't think it really got realized there. Would it be possible to have something like a list of '5 Big Reasons why I will love the new NS2 gameplay' written down or talked about by Andi somewhere?
The changelist is awesome too, but at this point I'm having considerable problems in finding the patterns from it.
Another great ability was teleporting between hives or the ability to select between more damage to buildings or player, which adds a bit more depth, not just a one fit for all.
Though since I've used HMG and seen electrified, why was they taking out, with the increased speed of the aliens both seem very necessary now, heavy armor I could take it or leave it.
Also love how there was no Aliens commander games didn't seem to take forever to start, because it's usually the Aliens commander that rarely people want to do, at-least the Marine commander it much more interesting, also liked surprisingly the dictatorial nature of the old Marine commander.
Well about the movement of the BT mod, its a more an alien buff then anything, and there is tonnes of feedback showing that you doing well, the Skulk at the moment makes a noise when you wall jumping properly also when you chain them you get the dog panting noise(maybe something else could be better, but it servers its purpose).
The Lerk servers its support role as it should do, umbra helps the team battles quite a bit, maybe needing some revision but now making umbra more relevant, also the new energy system make sure any Alien can not spam their ability as-well.
Next the Fade, probably the most controversial or isn't once you starting using the new BT one, it's not a nerf, odd to play with because most of us got used to the old Fade, but learning to blink and jump you go ridiculously faster then the old Fade, also most people moan for blink and you get straight away.
Onos, Well the same, no real difference still the super tank.
Another thing are the upgrades Aura is the best, also Regeneration is now useful again, also Celerity has a bigger impact, actually useful, in live Adrenaline wins out, but now in Classic and BT Celerity now has it's merit.
I just wish Focus and such also make it back.
NS1 ideas and NS2 movement(BT) = near perfection.
P.s sorry for the long post, could add more, but I feel this is enough.
This.
There's one thing you can be sure on with the BT mod changes, people who are above average/good will get better and people who are average/below average now will be worse off after it.
Gotta follow that Q3A example straight to the grave tho I guess.
Stating why would be more productive than this dumb drive by comment.
It's the common drive by trolling, see all over the internet, make a new account, then leave a comment like he/she did.
But on topic, people try to the new mod, I was skeptical, but you realize how making it more NS with BT movement is the way to go.
NS2 vanilla is very shallow in comparison, as I said, tech paths are always the same, also not enough variety for the marines, shotguns and win(or lose, but still always the go-to weapon), adding depth through abilities is the way to go, also this games should push experimental ideas, don't play it safe already losing players.
Alright, I may have been a little wasted when I wrote that!.
I still feel this a huge error. I can appreciate UWE are looking to keep this game alive and reel new players in whilst retaining the veterans. Is this really the answer?. It's a huge gamble and from a majority of the players in the game is either a "wth is that?" or "are they serious?" response.
Only a small crowd of people playing the game actually post on these forums for what I see.
My main gripe is the radical change of the game. What's wrong with the current version? Did you really make a huge mistake and this is the answer?. I don't like the idea of core mechanics being re-written, like movement. I don't like the idea of non-logical actions becoming standard for the sake of balance. "i.e MAC's not being able to weld eachother, or scaling on a single structure".
What about the guys who enjoy the game as it is?. Who said everyone is unhappy with the game? Who said it's stale or boring? What makes that true?.
Obviously there are a few individual changes in the BT mod that I'd probably like to see implemented.
Well, liked. Because I'm the only one who still plays. Because they got sick of the teamstacking and lone-marine-holding-entire-rooms-on-his-own matches and went back to playing games where there's actually a point to them showing up.
Well, from what I have tested, the 25 we're doing today will become 75. Of course I think the game is really to hard for a new player, but this actually making aliens far less fun to play than before. Even when I was a rookie, I never found it hard and confusing to know how much I deal to a marines. I don't think this is really the issue.
Maybe it´s just my opinion but this game is not fun it´s work
One another thing, PLEASE YOU DEV'S LISTEN TO ME:
New lerk movements are just HORRIBLE. You have the feeling to be in the space. This is just super hard to stabilize yourself. If you want to spike marines while skulks attack them, you just can't stop moving or you have to spam fly key and getting out of energy. Seriously, this was way better before. When you flap your wings, the direction you are looking to doesn't matter anymore and you continue to fly in the same way. And this is really annoying.
Also, alien's armor is, I think, too bad at the start of the game. You loose your Lerk so fast...If they fast research SGs, well you got barely one shooted even with armor, plus you can't control your movements really well because of what I've explained before.
Gorgeous was arguably a step backwards even though it was supposed to add new stuff to the game. What solid gameplay changes have actually made it live since then to rectify that? Changing a lot of stuff all at once doesn't work. All that will happen is that some more people will be robbed of some money, realize they got taken, and then not stick around. That and the fact that 90% of the current playerbase will hate having to adapt just builds resentment.
Throwing away the existing gameplay makes the developers look like they know they have a turd on their hands and it isn't worth polishing it. If that's too hard, what makes them think they are somehow going to trade it in in one patch for a golden egg. It doesn't inspire confidence. We're going to end up with a game that is just as fundamentally broken only in different ways, and I guarantee it will be heralded by some PR blather about 50/50 winrates and how "balanced" it is. It's not right guys, and it's certainly not logical.
Some ideas:
1) Ignore comp players, you need to build a community of casual/average players. The comp experiment has failed, it should be clear that any hope NS2 had for being taken seriously as a competitive game is over at this point. Flush that shit already.
2) No more gimmicky plays. No more silly additions that have no real value, like babblers, just so you can throw them on the stupid promo video to get mad cash.
3) Don't overblow the tech changes. LuaJIT gave things a bit of a boost, but it isn't all that because of how Lua/C interop works. OpenGL and DirectX11 aren't gonna do shit, let's stop pretending they are the second coming of ja himself. Flashy tech words do not a game make. Don't bait people with low end systems with stuff that isn't going to help them.
4) Stick with what you have when it works well. The current Fade and Lerk are two such examples. Minor tweaking needed at most. Stuff like drifters building things... what in the hell?!? Where do you come up with this stuff. It's not going to make RTS fans want to play if that's what it is about.
I am also a paying customer, and I've been playing this game since engine test and have been waiting a patch just like this. Sewlek doesn't add many new features, he just takes all the stuff and trys to make them equally viable (or usable at all).
Play the BT mod, and stop the angry customer threats, please.
There is your problem. You play two matches in a completely changed gameplay and expect that you know exactly how everything works right away. It's the same mistake rookies do when they evolve to a Fade, jump in front of a marine, die to his Shotgun and think "omg, this is so bad, this lifeform is super UP".
Don't fall into that trap just because you played vanilla NS2 before. When you join BT, you should have the same expectation that you had when you started playing NS2 as rookie in general.
Ninja PGs were a valid tactic back in NS1 and couldn't really pulled off in that way due to the new infestation in NS2. Marines always had to clear infestation away and make their position known, defeating the point of "ninja". The new changes allow that old tactic to come back. It's not like aliens don't have a home advantage after all: PGs have less HP than they do in vanilla and building structures on infestation is still slower than on normal ground. And if you don't scout the map enough to notice a marine team walking that far into your territory (especially given the increased movement capabilities of Skuls), then you deserve to be struck by that PG. In the end it's an awesome moment for the marine team to pull such a thing off.
Whips are also getting Bile Bomb on their own when they matured and are cheaper too. They do a fine job slowing marines down before entering your Hive and deny any structures to be built in the Hive that way.
@Bacillus: The general intentions of the changes can be outlined as:
- make underused content equally viable as strategy than the other stuff (early Robotics Factory, Flamethrowers, Grenade Launchers, other tech paths than Crag)
- increase the number of strategic decisions and allow for more varied early game tactics (Biomass; all support chambers can be built from the start; Arms Lab no longer requires Armory)
- prolong the early game / make lategame units less powerful and game deciding (since sneaky early game play as Skulk is more fun than just throwing unbeatable Exos and Onos at each other)
- make the gameplay feel more dynamic (reduction of gameplay elements that are not interesting in themselves, like chewing/welding an RT for a minute; more Drifter micromanagement for khammander, so he gets to do something else than just cysting around and clicking buttons; less waiting for things like Drifter or ARC production; ninja PGs; ProtoLab on 1 CC; aliens instantly lose an equipped upgrade when the structure goes down; individual RT ticks)
- make higher tech more accessible to new players (cost reduction of the tech, so you can go Onos even if you didn't save the entire match for it, as well as making it less bad if you lose that investment right away; removal of "No Res While Dead" rule; both upgrades are unlocked by the same upgrade structure for aliens; Biomass reduces the opportunity cost on individual Hive upgrades, so it's more likely that they will be researched anyway and no lifeform is "left behind" by the khammander)
- address some balancing issues (Armory turtling; lack of lategame scaling for alien lifeforms; egg lock on large servers; structure spam on alien side)
- offer new strategies (early Robotics Factory; Echoing Gorge Tunnels; fast Umbra; Flamethrower rush; fast ARCing; fast Jetpacks)
The BT mod has gone through a purging phase already where all ideas that did not address a balance issues or were making the gameplay more fun got phased out.
I'm not angry, I'm just wondering if there is real reasons to change things working.
I don't even know what to respond to such a post. So much "obvious", so much "fact", so much unfounded hyperbole… it would be cute if it wasn't so sad.
1) "Ignore your most active player base, who will still play the game on a regular base after the casual players have abandoned you. Also ignore that casual players eventually become near comp-level players if they stick around long enough." So, who is this ominous judge of whether or not NS2 is taken serious as a comp game? Last time I checked, there are still leagues, prizes and broadcasts of matches.
2) Funnily enough Babblers are used quite a lot by dedicated Gorges in comp play, since they give such a massive boost to a Gorge's life expectancy.
3) "Let's not implement changes that will make the game accessible to a wider audience of players on Unix and Mac systems and eventually enable Unix servers to host the game. Let's also ignore all the performance improvements that can come hand in hand with DX11, for instance the non-mirrored VRAM on 32 bit OS. You should just stop any technical advancement whatsoever, the game is in a good enough state right now."
And im a normal pub player, not competitive.
The problem is that many of NS2's features are severly underused, while others are overused, which is a shame because it doesn't lead to much variety in tactics.
Look at the marine weapons for instance. The GL and flamethrower are not used very often (even in pub games it's about one of the last things being researched), while shotguns are practically mandatory to have any chance of succes against an equally skilled alien team. BT mod is trying to change this by tweaking the shotgun, and making the GL and flamethrower a bit more useful and easier to access (cheaper to buy, less research costs).
Another example is the alien tech tree. Crag is mandatory because carapace is sooo important, shift is nice to have and a logical choice for second hive because you can use adrenaline for all the second hive abilities, and then there is shade, which is an early game gamble that loses much of it's use mid-late game. This sort of stuff is what makes people say NS2 is stale. So again, BT mod is trying to make all three hive specializations and it's upgrades equally viable.
I wouldn't say it's hit the sweet spot at the moment for said examples, but the intention to increase the viability of underused features in an attempt to increase the overall depth and variety is good, and it's heading in the right direction. The changes aren't meant to cater to a select crowd of veteran ns players, they're meant to make the game better and more enjoyable as a whole, for everyone. It still needs a lot more testing though, so the best you can do is play it often, and give feedback on specific changes.
But give it a real chance before making judgements. The "this is a huge mistake, people will leave NS2 forever" sort of doomsday speak isn't gonna help at all.
What doubts?
Yeah, all 100 of them. That's going to keep the game alive for sure. Focus on what counts.
All 5 of those guys too. Get real.
And not a single fuck was given. Sorry but the NS2 comp scene is so minor as to be worthless for promoting the game. In fact they are making it worse by promoting comp friendly/casual hostile mechanics. It's also never going to go anywhere with even 10x the current playerbase.
Meanwhile for everyone else they are useless, even if that is true which I doubt.
Unix and Mac? It hasn't been accepted by a decent enough amount of Windows users, and those platforms have such a small potential audience it almost isn't worth focusing any effort on.
I for one can't wait to see the blistering performance gains resulting from non-mirrored VRAM on a 32 bit OS. See 1.
In terms of making progress, fanboys are almost as bad as comp players.
The BT Fade is a beast, sure it takes getting use to, but when you do, you're flying around the place at mach speeds, also shadow-step while removed as a starter isn't really missed with the new movement, also when it comes in it gives that extra movement in combat.
About PGs, there easily found and jumped on by the Aliens seeing that every lifeforms moves at a very high speed.
Skulks are also very good, giving one of the active servers running BT, Hiedis or something, has some of the best players on it, the BT Skulk gives you a chance against good shooters, also the increase 75 bite cones helps quite a bit.
Ahh... the fun point of view, this will be a controversial point of view, but this games in essence isn't meant to be fun in your face, it's more interesting and you meant to find the enjoyment in that.
Emphasizing the gap between the two teams. I mean if you lost a Hive, downing from for example level 6 to 2. Every lifeform become weaker and so...less chances to change the game. It was good that you keep your upgrades when the Hive die so you are still powered and have a chance to win. Here, we got a weak Fade a Lerk. I've already talked about the lerk movements, I also don't understand why switching Blink and Shadowstep.
There is also one another thing: marines are reasearching very fast new weaps, jetpacks and exos, and after 10 minutes they have ererything. I personnaly love those start games, with sneaky skulks and few lerks around the field, against marines and their rifle. Here we have underpowered Lerks and Fades (150 armor for fade down to around 80...) against exos SGs jetpacks flamethrowers etc. I don't think this is the fun part of the game, where marines are standing to the entrance waiting for an occasion to push the hive. This is good to promote over weaps than SG, but I think this a bit too much. Everything is available really quick, and the end games on the current versions are not really fun. On the BT servs, you go to these kind of end games really faster.
Please noobs, continue telling me your experience of BT mod after 1-3 games. I'm sure you will shed light on the mod in some way beneficial with your 'don't do this or i quit attitude.' *snip* -Be nice.
Ok. Are you now going to back any of your statements up or will you persist on trying to continue a discussion solely based on your subjective opinions?
You keep postulating assumptions about the player demographics and declare them as fact.
It's easy to call me a fanboy just because my opinion is founded on experience from having actually played the BT mod regularly during it's entire development process, rather than creating a drama based solely on a short playthrough and reading a changelog. Ironically are the "fanboys and comp players" all advocating for the game's progress while you are the ones who are currently arguing extremely conservatively about keeping the status quo of the game.