I've had the opposite experience. All I ever hear with regards to glancing bites is that they are frustrating and unnecessary, or I just hear general confusion. I know people that quit NS2 simply because of glancing bites. I, personally, find it annoying and convoluted as I try to figure out how many more bites it will take to kill that marine in front of me, and I know how the system works.
They're frustrating because it takes time to adapt to it. It took me time to understand how damage actually worked in non-BT; way too much IIRC.
... and same thing @ trying to figure number of bites remaining. Someone suggested somewhere a sound depending of the damage for the skulks. This would give a quick and great overall feedback to the skulk. You simply CAN'T know all the damage you've done when you're moving your mouse around quickly while being trying to escape marine's bullet (either this or labels in the screen doesn't move while you move).
Glancing bite WITH feedback for the skulk other than those regular label... imo that would be the best (thougth I'd still need to test that).
I played a few BT games this weekend and I'm impressed. Some point I'd like to note :
Being weld when welding a structure is totally stupid. Worst thing in BT. Unlogical, stupid and ....wtf. How do you explain that you can get armor when welding a damaged structure and not when that structure is full life ?!...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Nanites.
You can think of them as intelligent welder sparks that get absorbed by marine armour.
Still doesn't explain why it would weld yourself "sometimes".
With current mecanism, it's kind-of if the game was promoting a "friendly-fire-for-structure" that doesn't exist. That way you can self-weld (...) I feel in competitions some RT wouldn't get fully welded in some scenario to get armor...
This feels really wrong IMO.
And I do somewhat agree with hakenspit. I feel that before the game was more played and more "fun" for the average player. I, thought, can't tell if BT would help or not.
Excellent work sewlek and friends. I like pretty much everything about BT mod and it has made NS2 actually enjoyable to play. Can't wait for these changes (and I'm sure alot more intelligent design changes) to be implemented in the future.
To the whingers: Awww wah wah I don't have time so you should make the game easy for me wah. Harden the fuck up. I don't have alot of time either. If you don't wanna suck at the game, learn how not to suck at the game. Otherwise don't complain if you get destroyed by someone who has taken the time and practice to learn.
Kids these days, want everything for free.
Sorry but I dont see how drinking a cup of concrete will help here, I certainly dont want things for free...I just dont want to have to invest 2 hours a day to be able to enjoy a game I paid good money for.
Telling casual players they have to suck because they cant/wont invest the time in learning complicated movement mechanics (different for almost every alien lifeform) and to live with it is why we are not seeing this community grow.
If the NS2 community wants to see this game die then continue this attitude towards casual players, you can see from the player numbers that casual gamers are not sticking around...I doubt its because they mastered the game in a few days, hit the skill ceiling and got bored.
So rather than trying to worry about increasing the skill ceiling (to appease to top echelon of players)...lets worry about ensuring new players are having fun...and how we lower the skill floor to keep them in the game.
For all the random crits tainted TF2 (for the TF purests) it did do a lot to help new players get kills they otherwise would not have and stick with the game.
Telling casual players they have to suck because they cant/wont invest the time in learning complicated movement mechanics (different for almost every alien lifeform) and to live with it is why we are not seeing this community grow.
How is this not the case in Live? In case you haven't noticed, BT mod is not implemented yet. So how can you possibly blame BT mod for a dying player base?
The fault lies solely with Flayra and co's horrible "balance" and design. They are the ones who got the game into the mess it's currently in. Sewlek is here to dig it out. As far as I've seen sewlek is trying to lower the skill floor, rather than doing what Flayra has done and severely lower the skill ceiling.
and I disagree, I believe it's because of terrible performance (albeit way better now thanks to the community as usual), an incredibly low skill ceiling and really un-fun and tedious gameplay/mechanics. All of which, BT is vastly changing/improving.
If the NS2 community wants to see this game die then continue this attitude towards casual players, you can see from the player numbers that casual gamers are not sticking around...I doubt its because they mastered the game in a few days, hit the skill ceiling and got bored.
No, that was us competitive players. I and many others mastered and then got frustrated with this game so fast. I won't say bored because it was worse than boredom, it was extremely annoying having your skill artificially limited so much. BT has improved this greatly and that helps casual players also, as once a casual player does eventually get good, they are rewarded for their time and effort and also have enjoyed the process alot more.
In my opinion, the biggest offender in the balance mod is the Fade. The BT Fade is horrendous. If you aren't a competitive level Fade, you'll almost never be able to be competent at BT Fade unless you put in a lot of practice and understand the mechanics of it. New Fades need to learn things like Blink tapping, energy management, Blinking in combat, and using timed jumps after Blink to move around quickly. And those are just the basics.
With Shadowstep being worthless and lack of double jump, Fades all play the same; there is no variety or creativity in playing Fade. This leads to Fades being extremely predictable. Any decent shotgunner can solo even the best of Fades. All this adds up to a low skill ceiling lifeform that just isn't fun anymore.
There are other problems with the Fade that seem more like bugs than anything else. You can't strafe while moving forward, and Blinking through vents is extremely slow. The former seems to be a conflict with strafe-jump acceleration and the latter just seems to be a collision issue.
I agree with most of what you said, but the part about a lower skill ceiling is simply not true, I've seen some really amazing fades in BT...
What I think of some of the Balance mod's Implementation and accessibility rather than it's actual Balance.
---Hidden Game Effects and Numbers---
The "Self weld while welding something else" effect is not something I agree with. The main issue I have with it, is that it may be not obvious to a new player and its almost like a hidden behind the scenes mechanic. The Alien lifeforms having different upgrade costs is another example of hidden game mechanics that I feel need to be made more obvious to players. I do not completely agree with this system, as it appears to be in place only to allow aliens to change upgrades on the fly without large amounts of evolution changing spam on higher lifeforms. I think a better solution should be developed to allow Aliens to change upgrades without these hidden Pres costs per lifeform type and base lifefrom cost changes.
---Researching Alien Abilities---
I think the Biomass system has allot of potential but the Alien abilities being moved to individual chambers for research instead of the hive, produced a large number of complications when I tried out the Mod.
Initially I had trouble finding which chamber is associated with which ability type and it was unclear that I could only do one research per category at a time like bile-bomb or umbra in the 'crag' category. I am also unsure if there is a point that the team could actually lose these upgrades if all the same chamber types were destroyed or the team's biomass was reduced.
The requirements for the current Ability upgrade system in Vanilla NS2 is much more clear in terms of the ability's requirements as it clearly states how many hives are required for each upgrade to be researched and to remain active. I would much prefer that the standard chambers remain just that, standard chambers and are in the game solely for their individual passive auras and bonuses. I also think that the commander would find it much easier if he/she only had to navigate to one of the easily locatable Hives on the map's tech points to perform all the required team upgrades and research, rather than looking for small chambers around the map.
---Biomass Progress Bar---
The current interface element showing the progress of the team's biomass would be better off with individual pointers along the bar to show where each point of biomass is located. I think this is important because the 'progress-bar' only effectively shows my current biomass out of the maximum number, and when each Alien ability will become available.
It can be hard to gauge what percentage of a new point of biomass the team is at from the non-hive structure bonuses. Its hard to tell if the team is at 1% or 99% progress to receiving a new point of biomass from normal structures.
---Building With Drifters---
I like the Idea of drifters building alien structures and what it can offer to the game. But I personally struggle a great deal with the games current commander interface when constantly shifting from the build, support and unit menus to get things done.
In order to build now, I must constantly shift from the support menu to drop Cysts, the build menu to drop chambers, the Hive's menu to build more drifters and then control the drifter to actually build a structure, while constantly shifting my commander view between these different places on the map. The process of building structures has been spread out over far too many menus for the Alien team and there are now far too many actions involved for this important game element.
On a side note: I would love to see the NS2 interface combined with a MMORPG style interface with Buildings, Unit controls, and upgrades located in the bottom right window and selected units and commander abilities located on a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen that become visible as they are unlocked/researched. This would at least remove my need to change menus in order to drop cysts, and may even make commander abilities like medpacks, bone-walls, or scans easier for new commanders to control and get used to.
---Drifter Build Cooldown---
Having a cooldown for building drifters as opposed to a standard build time is another aspect of the game that feels inconsistent to me.
I am assuming that having a cooldown rather than a standard build timer was implemented to allow both hive upgrades and drifters to be built at the same time. However, I feel this causes issues when you compare it to how the 'standard-team-research-buttons' or a Robotics Factory works with their build timers rather than a set cooldowns to unlock research and construct units. The majority of the confusion stems from me having to get used to placing the 'Rally-point' from the Hive, prior to hitting the Drifter button. This differs from the robotics factory as it allows you place the 'Rally-point' before or shortly after pressing the MAC or ARC button during the build time.
I have also associated cooldowns with the Commander's special abilities such as Bone-walls and Nano-shields, and it feels inconsistent and strange to have this rule suddenly apply to the building of units as well.
Telling casual players they have to suck because they cant/wont invest the time in learning complicated movement mechanics (different for almost every alien lifeform) and to live with it is why we are not seeing this community grow.
How is this not the case in Live? In case you haven't noticed, BT mod is not implemented yet. So how can you possibly blame BT mod for a dying player base?
The fault lies solely with Flayra and co's horrible "balance" and design. They are the ones who got the game into the mess it's currently in. Sewlek is here to dig it out. As far as I've seen sewlek is trying to lower the skill floor, rather than doing what Flayra has done and severely lower the skill ceiling.
and I disagree, I believe it's because of terrible performance (albeit way better now thanks to the community as usual), an incredibly low skill ceiling and really un-fun and tedious gameplay/mechanics. All of which, BT is vastly changing/improving.
If the NS2 community wants to see this game die then continue this attitude towards casual players, you can see from the player numbers that casual gamers are not sticking around...I doubt its because they mastered the game in a few days, hit the skill ceiling and got bored.
No, that was us competitive players. I and many others mastered and then got frustrated with this game so fast. I won't say bored because it was worse than boredom, it was extremely annoying having your skill artificially limited so much. BT has improved this greatly and that helps casual players also, as once a casual player does eventually get good, they are rewarded for their time and effort and also have enjoyed the process alot more.
You have been around long enough to know we have seen nerf after nerf for aliens, the bite cones got narrowed, then we had glancing bites added to compensate for this.
We saw marine movement enhanced and skulks reduced.
I have been saying since those changes that aliens (mostly skulk play) is not fun and marines are much more fun throughout the game even with just LMG.
Given most new players dont play anything other than skulk (for long) this creates a situation where they only want to play one side of the match...and find the other side too daunting.
As such they dont bother investing the hours needed to get the basics of alien game play down.
Having top players bored is not a bad thing...if it promotes a casual gaming experience that draws and maintains casual players.
What we have currently is a game thats overly daunting and hard to learn (especially aliens), adding in skill based movement simply complicates this further.
I dont class learning to play as simply being able to load a map and get fragged, but to do much other than this takes longer than most casual players will invest (let alone maintain).
Sure we need a comp scene...but first we need to have a casual playing base. Once we have that we should start worrying about keeping the players who cap out the current skill ceiling (sure I will get flamed for saying it).
We need a lot more of the former if we want to have many/any of the later in the years to come.
Some ppl can set world records for donkey kong....re-building a game to their standard would mean most of us would couldn't get past the second level.
Posted this in the topic about docking, but felt it would be more fitting in here. I won't go into BT, as others have covered what I wanted to say specifically about BT(For short, and as you'll probably figure out after reading below, too much focus on competitive while leaving the commoner behind). Besides a red thread throughout, that you claim to seek information and feedback from everyone but you choose to listen to only a select few. Hence I don't see the point, and what is below is more of a vent for the last few months of frustration.
It's so sad to see one of my favorite games take such a nosedive and getting detached from the casuals. I had a lot of faith in you UWE, but you have proven over the last few months that you are not up to this task. Your game is dying and you are pressing all the wrong panic-buttons in a vein attempt at punching some life into it again. This is not meant specifically for docking, but just about every patch or change(or for that matter a lot of the forum posts by UWE themselves or others part of the team in some way). Cocky over-the-top attitude picking on the little casual guy for being wrong in his opinion(wtf?), and the rest of the "i-love-you-UWE"-group joins in naturally, and you allow this. I see blatant ad hominem go ignored because its in support of you, while other posts that barely touch on sarcasm gets slammed down hard. Granted I've seen a lot worse, but not expected after all the contact from NS1. Anyways, drifting off the point:
Your game is dying because you have catered too much to the competitive scene and your group of testers, while taking too long to fix what needed to be fixed(I.e. performance). The few casuals you have left are leaving, hell I even had 4 people on my list deleting the game after docking got out and the stuff about BT was announced, for them it was the famous drop(2 of them originally recommended the game and the whole reason I bought it in the first place). And I understand them, A LOT, as I've seen changes come about over the last few months that have gone so against what the "common word" on servers were, but instead because the competitive scene didn't like something. This is quite obvious by how people are regularly leaving your game even after all these patches and changes that have come about, you are not giving them(casuals) what they want.
It's funny that people insist on the bunnyhop thing when walljump is simply the only way to get good speed. If you play like in vanilla you get more speed with less effort. But people read bunnyhop (hint: it's not bhop) and immediatly say it's unintuitive and that it's a glitch (prejudice! ps: it's not bhop). Try playing and see how just walljumping gets you to higher speeds than in vanilla.
But we can do hyperbole and say it's super complicated, when it's actually easier, but ok.
It's so sad to see one of my favorite games take such a nosedive and getting detached from the casuals. I had a lot of faith in you UWE, but you have proven over the last few months that you are not up to this task. Your game is dying and you are pressing all the wrong panic-buttons in a vein attempt at punching some life into it again. This is not meant specifically for docking, but just about every patch or change(or for that matter a lot of the forum posts by UWE themselves or others part of the team in some way). Cocky over-the-top attitude picking on the little casual guy for being wrong in his opinion(wtf?), and the rest of the "i-love-you-UWE"-group joins in naturally, and you allow this. I see blatant ad hominem go ignored because its in support of you, while other posts that barely touch on sarcasm gets slammed down hard. Granted I've seen a lot worse, but not expected after all the contact from NS1. Anyways, drifting off the point:
Your game is dying because you have catered too much to the competitive scene and your group of testers, while taking too long to fix what needed to be fixed(I.e. performance). The few casuals you have left are leaving, hell I even had 4 people on my list deleting the game after docking got out and the stuff about BT was announced, for them it was the famous drop(2 of them originally recommended the game and the whole reason I bought it in the first place). And I understand them, A LOT, as I've seen changes come about over the last few months that have gone so against what the "common word" on servers were, but instead because the competitive scene didn't like something. This is quite obvious by how people are regularly leaving your game even after all these patches and changes that have come about, you are not giving them(casuals) what they want.
Can you list the changes made that favor the comp community and harm the pub? Only one I can think of is the whip nerf but a dev explained why time wasn't yet put into getting them functional again. What specific changes were made that specifically benefits the comp community and at the same time hurts the pub one?
AiorosJoin Date: 2003-03-24Member: 14850Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited June 2013
only think i read from hakensplit is that he never even played the bt mod longer then an hour ....
some cheese to the whine? :P
Ns2 player numbers are droping and will keep droping.
So something need to be done. A relaunch of thegame to get new players in and hopefully to stay is the only way to go.
The Vanilla game couldnt get people to stay in the game apparently.
There are still people using Firefox 8 or Explorer 4, people still use old cell phones and other OLD crap. Because changes are so "diffcult".
But these people, lucky for the humanity, are a majority and will stay as such.
And to speak of the comp scene, these players have done a lot for the casual players. And they are the reason most of the casual players are still playing this game.
@mendasp
the biggest issue is that ppl cry without trying it out or understanding the changes.
You need to play it to understand it ...
If u read all the changes line by line without having played a single round i would rage aswell, but these changes combined are a masterpeace.
You need to look @ the bigger picture
PS: BT Mod is 10 times more fun to watch e.g. Round 3/4. Most casual players like to watch these games more then playing.
We r just missing the plattform to announce these games more to the casual players.
AiorosJoin Date: 2003-03-24Member: 14850Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Your game is dying because you have catered too much to the competitive scene and your group of testers, while taking too long to fix what needed to be fixed(I.e. performance).
hahaha best joke i have read so far in this forum ... your playing a diffrent game you should check the forum your currently reading in.
They got 1 dev for the Balance and everyone else of the UWE team is currently working on the performance. You didnt read a single post of them explaining it over and over and over again ... did you?!
Besides a red thread throughout, that you claim to seek information and feedback from everyone but you choose to listen to only a select few.
sewlek is playing non stop on the HBZ BT server talking to casual players and getting feedback from them.
i would bet $$$ that u didnt even try to gave some "proper" feedback.
and changes for the comp scene which is harming casuals? Please tell me some of these changes
Hive can drop eggs now, without going shift first (definitly comp only)
You can change your upgrades now as alien, switch
Shotgun got nerfed against skulk and buffed vs fades (casuals love to get one shot by a shotgun)
Gorge cost reduced to 5 res (casual hate to play gorge ... make it more expansive otherwhise it will hurt casuals! gorge is to OP)
AsranielJoin Date: 2002-06-03Member: 724Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Retired Community Developer
I think the criticism mostly comes from the fear some people have that the game is dying, an understandable fear when looking at the player count. But when you try out the bt mod you will see, that if anything, this will save the game. Combined with luajit this is really a huge step forward for the game.
What changes exactly are you referring to? Because I don't understand why some people keep saying the bt mod is making things harder for casual players, when the skill floor is actually being lowered.
For instance, one of the most common complaints was that skulks are not fun to play, because they're too slow and clumsy, and because it's too common to get oneshotted by a decent shotgunner. Well, in the bt mod it's now super easy to pick up a lot of speed with just walljumping (to a degree one could argue they're too fast). Skulks also scale up a bit in HP through the mid-late game. The 75dmg cone is significantly wider. Parasites stay active. And the shotgun has seen a base damage reduction. Combined with more viable upgrades to choose from (regen/celerity now work in combat, phantom and aura are pretty awesome too), this makes skulk play a lot more interesting.
On another note, I do think however, seeing as a lot of people react very hesitant to changes in general, it might be a good idea to try and document the reasoning behind all of the changes a bit better than the current changelog does. If Sewlek could maybe be a bit more clear on what he's trying to achieve with specific changes and just share the overall goal for NS2 he has in mind, I think we'd see much more willingness to give the bt mod a chance.
Half of this thread is hilarious. "The small changes at a time are killing the game!" Hmm, maybe a different idea then? How about no changes, like most of the last 2 months? Well there isn't a wave of new people in here yet, so nope, didn't work. So if minor changes at a time didn't work and no changes didn't work, WONDER WHATS LEFT?
Sorry but I dont see how drinking a cup of concrete will help here, I certainly dont want things for free...I just dont want to have to invest 2 hours a day to be able to enjoy a game I paid good money for.
Telling casual players they have to suck because they cant/wont invest the time in learning complicated movement mechanics (different for almost every alien lifeform) and to live with it is why we are not seeing this community grow.
If the NS2 community wants to see this game die then continue this attitude towards casual players, you can see from the player numbers that casual gamers are not sticking around...I doubt its because they mastered the game in a few days, hit the skill ceiling and got bored.
So rather than trying to worry about increasing the skill ceiling (to appease to top echelon of players)...lets worry about ensuring new players are having fun...and how we lower the skill floor to keep them in the game.
For all the random crits tainted TF2 (for the TF purests) it did do a lot to help new players get kills they otherwise would not have and stick with the game.
Are we talking about the same casual players who run in the middle of the floor as skulks and die over and over again? The current fades who blink/shadow step in (on the ground mind you) and die right away? From what I've seen a large chunk of "casual" players don't even know how to play the current life forums. Now when the BT goes live sure most people might suck right away, but I'm sure a lot of people did when they first installed NS2. But people will learn, they always do. And if you want a leg up now, GO PLAY THE BALANCE MOD.
im interested to see what the long term implications of this decision will be. i think UWE are largely doubling down on the hardcore crowd. I hope that UWE will continue working on the NS franchise - and if they do, it will be interesting to see what direction they take with that. maybe with NS2, seeing as it was followed, supported and funded, in part directly by the hardcore NS1 playerbase (though i think they overestimate their contribution) UWE feels they owe them a debt, and thus have given them alot of influence when it comes to BT and the idea to implement it as vanilla. its arguable NS2 wouldnt have even got off the ground without them so you can understand why they would be pissed that the end result does not match their expectations.
however, for a possible and eventual NS3, that debt is now paid, and seeing as ill likely be in a wheelchair when that comes out, ill gladly have autotracking smartguns as the marine spawn weapon :P
What I think of some of the Balance mod's Implementation and accessibility rather than it's actual Balance.
---Hidden Game Effects and Numbers---
The "Self weld while welding something else" effect is not something I agree with. The main issue I have with it, is that it may be not obvious to a new player and its almost like a hidden behind the scenes mechanic. The Alien lifeforms having different upgrade costs is another example of hidden game mechanics that I feel need to be made more obvious to players. I do not completely agree with this system, as it appears to be in place only to allow aliens to change upgrades on the fly without large amounts of evolution changing spam on higher lifeforms. I think a better solution should be developed to allow Aliens to change upgrades without these hidden Pres costs per lifeform type and base lifefrom cost changes.
Agree about the "nanite-induced self-weld". Sure, it's there to help casual players out a bit if nobody else in their team brought a Welder and the comm didn't get a MAC for them. But it makes no frickin' sense whatsoever and is completely hidden.
I don't see a problem with the differing trait costs, though. You can see the cost in the evolution menu for each lifeform when hovering over them. People just need to open their eyes for once again in that menu that they got so used to already until they memorized the changed costs of the new lifeforms.
The change is there to hit two birds with one stone: It allows to re-evolve upgrades for a small fee, depending on the lifeform, and it allows to make some lategame lifeforms available sooner but in a weaker state until they invest more into them.
Skulk = 0 res + 0 res per trait = 0 res cost
Gorge = 5 res + 2 per trait = 5 - 11 res cost
Lerk = 25 res + 4 res per trait = 25 - 37 res cost
Fade = 40 res + 6 res per trait = 40 - 58 res cost
Onos = 60 res + 8 res per trait = 60 - 84 res cost
Which means that on most lifeforms, you are off cheaper with one or two of the available upgrades than in vanilla. And since you don't have all upgrades in the early game anyway, you rarely hit the maximum cost level anyway before you have the map control to afford it easily.
---Researching Alien Abilities---
I think the Biomass system has allot of potential but the Alien abilities being moved to individual chambers for research instead of the hive, produced a large number of complications when I tried out the Mod.
Initially I had trouble finding which chamber is associated with which ability type and it was unclear that I could only do one research per category at a time like bile-bomb or umbra in the 'crag' category. I am also unsure if there is a point that the team could actually lose these upgrades if all the same chamber types were destroyed or the team's biomass was reduced.
The requirements for the current Ability upgrade system in Vanilla NS2 is much more clear in terms of the ability's requirements as it clearly states how many hives are required for each upgrade to be researched and to remain active. I would much prefer that the standard chambers remain just that, standard chambers and are in the game solely for their individual passive auras and bonuses. I also think that the commander would find it much easier if he/she only had to navigate to one of the easily locatable Hives on the map's tech points to perform all the required team upgrades and research, rather than looking for small chambers around the map.
I agree that the current new chamber-based system is a bit confusing and doesn't really add much other than an attempt to allow marines to target more stuff in the alien base and a slight delay/added costs to get specific upgrades.
As for upgrades tied to structures: It feels like an awkwardly shoved in addition. It's like tying the Shotgun upgrade to Sentries. Those chambers are not meant to be used in that way and it forces you to always build a set of them in your base, even though you might only want to have them at the front lines.
You want to provide marines with the possibility to attack the upgrades directly. But then it should just be a special upgrade structure that was placed automatically at the Hive when the upgrade is researched in it. You could make it a bigger, red glowing Cyst that gets automatically placed in the vicinity of the Hive (similar to an egg) as soon as the upgrade finished researching. (A more appropriate thing might be to have the Hive itself grow something on it that the marines can attack, but I can't come up with an art design that would work for many upgrades in one Hive location that wouldn't look awful or ruin the iconic design of the Hive itself. Hence the separate upgrade structures.)
The structure would be dropped near the Hive that researched it, so you can decide on your own where to research what stuff in order to protect it from marines. When such a structure gets taken out by marines, you could make it cost only a little amount and a little research time (both 30% of the full upgrade, perhaps?) to redrop it at the Hive that performs the re-researching.
Upgrades that are separated from the researching structure and can be attacked individually is a concept that was already utilized in Star Trek Armada II.
---Biomass Progress Bar---
The current interface element showing the progress of the team's biomass would be better off with individual pointers along the bar to show where each point of biomass is located. I think this is important because the 'progress-bar' only effectively shows my current biomass out of the maximum number, and when each Alien ability will become available.
It can be hard to gauge what percentage of a new point of biomass the team is at from the non-hive structure bonuses. Its hard to tell if the team is at 1% or 99% progress to receiving a new point of biomass from normal structures.
Is that actually still a thing? I thought it was just one of the false informations in the change list of this thread's associated blog post.
Biomass is currently only accumulated through the Hive upgrades, not through any additional structures. Which is why the current progress bar is perfectly fine. It doesn't show any decimals in Insight either after all. (It would probably make more sense to actually show the Biomass in Insight on the tech point description panel in the bottom right, though. It currently shows Power Node HP for CCs and Egg Count for Hives down there, but Egg count is not really important nowadays and eggs are something you can clearly see in the game whereas Biomass is not. And I would also like to see indicators for the currently used amount of Supply Points in Insight.)
---Building With Drifters---
I like the Idea of drifters building alien structures and what it can offer to the game. But I personally struggle a great deal with the games current commander interface when constantly shifting from the build, support and unit menus to get things done.
In order to build now, I must constantly shift from the support menu to drop Cysts, the build menu to drop chambers, the Hive's menu to build more drifters and then control the drifter to actually build a structure, while constantly shifting my commander view between these different places on the map. The process of building structures has been spread out over far too many menus for the Alien team and there are now far too many actions involved for this important game element.
Not a fan of the Drifter changes. There is no good synergy between them. It's just an annoyance for khammanders to require them to build stuff fast - I'd rather have a flatout permanent 10% reduction to the construction speed of everything (if you really want to nerf early game alien expansion) than needing Drifters for that.
It's easier for marines to ninja a PG in the Balance mod, but at the same time it got harder for aliens to ninja ANY structure (especially Hives behind the enemy lines) because you need to get a Drifter there first and then have it make an awful lot of noise. And having the AI unit acting autonomously always has the potential of ruining something you planned to do and has imho no place in this game until there is also a button to change it into a state where it doesn't do anything without explicit commands at all.
If Drifters become such a necessity for alien expansion, then their low HP just becomes an annoyance that requires you to constantly produce reinforcements and send them out again. Rewarding good micromanagement is one thing, but creating annoying busywork that just feels like it hampers the gameplay is another one.
The complete removal of Camo is another thing that massively hurts the survivability of a Drifter. The passive upgrades from tech paths were a perfect middle way, since they all would give Drifters a necessary survivability boost.
- If you went with sensory tech path, you would get a Drifter that is specialized on reconnaissance, in which case it is perfectly fine imho to make him a "sit & forget until needed in combat" kind of thing that you don't need to micro a lot, since your micromanagement focus as khammander shifted towards the hallucinations that the Drifter produced. And in the end is the Drifter still barely visible, so there is always a chance for marines to notice that they are watched. You can adjust the time that is needed to recloak as well for balancing it.
- If you went with the movement tech path, the Drifter gets the necessary speed that makes it viable to micromanage it. With the reduced HP it's still easy to kill it in time, but now it actually becomes viable to move it away since the marine could easily catch up with it at it's normal movement speed.
- If you went with the defensive tech path, the Drifter can get more base HP or regeneration in order to survive longer even when it's spotted. Thus removing the frustration associated with it.
If the concern is that Drifters become super annoying and powerful with all those upgrades at once when the aliens have 3 Hives, you could always make the passive upgrades something that you need to purchase for 1-2 tres per Drifter, so having more powerful Drifters on the field makes them more costly and thus less spammable unless you have the map control to afford it.
But according to Sewlek he dislikes the old way of cloaked Drifters being a permanent free scan for aliens that you could move somewhere and then forget about it.
Imho the change to less-than-100%-cloaked Drifters fixed that problem already, though. Players could still spot Drifters in the vicinity that way, since the distortion was in eye height and thus more easily noticeable than Skulks in corners of ceilings.
On a side note: I would love to see the NS2 interface combined with a MMORPG style interface with Buildings, Unit controls, and upgrades located in the bottom right window and selected units and commander abilities located on a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen that become visible as they are unlocked/researched. This would at least remove my need to change menus in order to drop cysts, and may even make commander abilities like medpacks, bone-walls, or scans easier for new commanders to control and get used to.
A permanent sidebar similar to how it was done in the C&C series from Generals: Zero Hour onwards might be a nice addition for global abilities like Scans, Med Packs, Ammo Packs, Nano Shield, Nutrient Mist, Rupture and Bone Wall.
The current system is more focusing on hotkey users who will type E + A or E + S every second.
---Drifter Build Cooldown---
Having a cooldown for building drifters as opposed to a standard build time is another aspect of the game that feels inconsistent to me.
I am assuming that having a cooldown rather than a standard build timer was implemented to allow both hive upgrades and drifters to be built at the same time. However, I feel this causes issues when you compare it to how the 'standard-team-research-buttons' or a Robotics Factory works with their build timers rather than a set cooldowns to unlock research and construct units. The majority of the confusion stems from me having to get used to placing the 'Rally-point' from the Hive, prior to hitting the Drifter button. This differs from the robotics factory as it allows you place the 'Rally-point' before or shortly after pressing the MAC or ARC button during the build time.
I have also associated cooldowns with the Commander's special abilities such as Bone-walls and Nano-shields, and it feels inconsistent and strange to have this rule suddenly apply to the building of units as well.
But it's so much more enjoyable if the Drifter pops out right when you need it instead of having to wait for it to finish and then sending it somewhere. It reduces the necessary amount of micromanagement and waiting time.
In fact they are making it worse by promoting comp friendly/casual hostile mechanics.
This holds no weight unless you provide *how*, exactly you find this to be true.
Take 10 noobs and have them join vanilla. They'll be confused but interested (until they get rocked as skulk).
Now have them join BT, and they won't have a fucking clue what is going on.
How do I know? I've got 600+ hours in NS2, and BT mod is a major shock to me every time I play it.
All my friends who still play (who are significantly more casual than me) think it is crazy. It's almost a different game and it's so obviously far more complex and casual player hostile than vanilla I'm amazed anyone would try to claim otherwise.
Again... You give no specifics and merely make a claim without any example or evidence??
It only sounds like you dislike having to learn a new game, (which wouldn't effect new players any differently) - not that you have some specific feedback on how the game could be easier to learn?
How do you expect such a thing to be fixed /addressed if you can't even communicate what exactly needs work?
Devs aren't mind readers, ya know.
Nor do they have the resources to setup some theoretical controlled study of new players playing an NS2 Pepsi challenge.
It's up to customers like you to provide useful, specific, detailed feedback.
Take 10 noobs and have them join vanilla. They'll be confused but interested (until they get rocked as skulk).
Now have them join BT, and they won't have a **** clue what is going on.
How do I know? I've got 600+ hours in NS2, and BT mod is a major shock to me every time I play it.
All my friends who still play (who are significantly more casual than me) think it is crazy. It's almost a different game and it's so obviously far more complex and casual player hostile than vanilla I'm amazed anyone would try to claim otherwise.
Pure hyperbole. BT mod tinkers with a lot of aspects of the game, but it's still very much NS2. It's no more difficult than vanilla, it's just a bit different and opens up more gameplay choices.
You don't have to be a competitive clanner to appreciate that. I've never played any game competitively and thoroughly enjoy BT mod, much more than vanilla.
Honestly, as far as playing on the field goes, it's no harder to pick up than the vanilla game if you're completely new, in fact it's pretty much the same.
^^^
Going to have to agree with IronHorse, for new players it's a new game regardless. NS2 is complicated no matter which way you cut it. The only thing that will make it harder for a n00b to learn is that most n00bs rely on experienced players for advice and for a while we won't know what to tell them. As long as we don't have a free weekend at the same time I don't see it being an issue.
If it were up to me I'd have used the mod jam to work on a single player mode. That would be the best way to learn about the game for a new player. A nice linear experience guiding you through each element of the game. That's a separate issue though in my opinion. Nothing to do with balance other then balance changes could effect how the SP mode would play out.
lets say you are in a really smelly room, yet you have been in this room long enough that you have gotten used to the smell. Now along comes someone who says you should go to another room with a different smell that is less smelly ... yet to you it smells worse than the room you were just in because your not used to this new smell.
The BT skulk movement is better ... but it still smells maybe this is why people are so up in arms ?
lets say you are in a really smelly room, yet you have been in this room long enough that you have gotten used to the smell. Now along comes someone who says you should go to another room with a different smell that is less smelly ... yet to you it smells worse than the room you were just in because your not used to this new smell.
The BT skulk movement is better ... but it still smells maybe this is why people are so up in arms ?
That smell... That smelly smell that smells.... smelly...
Again... You give no specifics and merely make a claim without any example or evidence??
*Snip* Keep that language out of here -Ironhorse The perspective of my friends who play on the upcoming balance test is evidence. You and the devs can take it or leave it, I'm not going to debate. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that I made it up or it isn't representative of how some people feel about the game. How about you or anyone else arguing for the BT to replace vanilla bring some evidence that it is more casual friendly if you care about evidence so much.
The devs seem to have the time to poll the opinions of competitve players, and terribad "playtesters" such as yourself. How about they redirect that effort into polling new or casual players (perhaps via an in game poll as previously suggested by others), and then build the game into something that has a chance of attracting more people from these groups.
UWE could shit in a box and replace NS2 with it and people like you would ask for "evidence" that it isn't better, all the while watching the game die.
The flipside is that there would be less confusing and frustrating mechanics to learn and deal with. The only question is, which do you value more?
I have never met anyone* who, once they were told how skulk bites worked, responded to the mechanic any way other than positively. If the criteria for removing mechanics is "confusing unless explained", regardless of other considerations, then there'll be nothing left of the game at all.
*Edit: Excluding people crying about hitreg issues.
I've had the opposite experience. All I ever hear with regards to glancing bites is that they are frustrating and unnecessary, or I just hear general confusion. I know people that quit NS2 simply because of glancing bites. I, personally, find it annoying and convoluted as I try to figure out how many more bites it will take to kill that marine in front of me, and I know how the system works.
What if glancing bites were reduced to just two possible results, the 75 and the 25 (or 30 or something)? Would that simplify things sufficiently? With only three options (miss (0), hit (75), glance (30)) it would be easier to implement obvious feedback as to which had happened, and there'd be less possible bite combinations to have to mentally arithmetic.
Again... You give no specifics and merely make a claim without any example or evidence??
The perspective of my friends who play on the upcoming balance test is evidence. You and the devs can take it or leave it, I'm not going to debate a fanboy. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that I made it up or it isn't representative of how some people feel about the game. How about you or anyone else arguing for the BT to replace vanilla bring some evidence that it is more casual friendly if you care about evidence so much.
First off let me say I prob only have 20 hrs total over the whole course of playing the balance mod, so I'm still new to it but I feel I can answer your question. I could say marine, skulk and lerk movement is more newbie friendly. The skulk seems to do the job of lowering the skill floor and raising the skill ceiling at the same time.
Marine movement is more friendly to aliens since you don't have hopping marines that can out jump skulks at close range. This fact alone means I'll be able to rambo a bit less in pubs since a pack of skulks will have a larger chance at taking me down since I can't dance around them to avoid them. For Skulk at first I was approaching it like i had to use A/D to go any where since that's what I had been reading on the forums but it's actually not the case. When you just press w and walljump like live you will noticeably gain speed. It feels much easier and more rewarding to hold w and jump player in the balance mod then live. Lerk is fairly similar in flight characteristics except you could say its more newbie friendly becuase you can accelerate quicker when flapping. This provides better escape maneuvers. For the naturally a lower HP lifeform it's nice to have some escape ability.
Aura is also an ability that will GREATLY help the casual gamer. Give your casual gamer limited range wallhacks that tell them the marines HP (as in low, medium and high) and you will greatly improve their survivabiltiy. No more running around a corner into 4 shotgun marines. No going around a corner to a shotgunner camping the corner to blast your 30 pres lerk.
As much as I hate to fucking admit it but the wider bullet spread will also help your casual gamer get kills up close since they don't have to track skulks pixel perfect. This lowers the skill floor at the cost of reducing the skill ceiling.
I'm sure I could think of more things if I played more of the mod.
Again... You give no specifics and merely make a claim without any example or evidence??
How about you or anyone else arguing for the BT to replace vanilla bring some evidence that it is more casual friendly if you care about evidence so much.
Hive can drop eggs now, without going shift first (definitly comp only)
You can change your upgrades now as alien, switch
Shotgun got nerfed against skulk and buffed vs fades (casuals love to get one shot by a shotgun)
Gorge cost reduced to 5 res (casual hate to play gorge ... make it more expansive otherwhise it will hurt casuals! gorge is to OP)
Also:
- the removal of glancing bites (it is way easier to kill marines, and you don't need to be imba pro at alien movement, you just need to be sneaky like before)
- the self weld (most comp players would argue it should be taken out, yet it is still in because of feedback of casual players who were afraid of not getting welded on pub servers)
edit: AND sewlek fixed the sound bug skulks make when they touch the ground, but I dont know if that counts.
Comments
They're frustrating because it takes time to adapt to it. It took me time to understand how damage actually worked in non-BT; way too much IIRC.
... and same thing @ trying to figure number of bites remaining. Someone suggested somewhere a sound depending of the damage for the skulks. This would give a quick and great overall feedback to the skulk. You simply CAN'T know all the damage you've done when you're moving your mouse around quickly while being trying to escape marine's bullet (either this or labels in the screen doesn't move while you move).
Glancing bite WITH feedback for the skulk other than those regular label... imo that would be the best (thougth I'd still need to test that).
Still doesn't explain why it would weld yourself "sometimes".
With current mecanism, it's kind-of if the game was promoting a "friendly-fire-for-structure" that doesn't exist. That way you can self-weld (...) I feel in competitions some RT wouldn't get fully welded in some scenario to get armor...
This feels really wrong IMO.
And I do somewhat agree with hakenspit. I feel that before the game was more played and more "fun" for the average player. I, thought, can't tell if BT would help or not.
Sorry but I dont see how drinking a cup of concrete will help here, I certainly dont want things for free...I just dont want to have to invest 2 hours a day to be able to enjoy a game I paid good money for.
Telling casual players they have to suck because they cant/wont invest the time in learning complicated movement mechanics (different for almost every alien lifeform) and to live with it is why we are not seeing this community grow.
If the NS2 community wants to see this game die then continue this attitude towards casual players, you can see from the player numbers that casual gamers are not sticking around...I doubt its because they mastered the game in a few days, hit the skill ceiling and got bored.
So rather than trying to worry about increasing the skill ceiling (to appease to top echelon of players)...lets worry about ensuring new players are having fun...and how we lower the skill floor to keep them in the game.
For all the random crits tainted TF2 (for the TF purests) it did do a lot to help new players get kills they otherwise would not have and stick with the game.
How is this not the case in Live? In case you haven't noticed, BT mod is not implemented yet. So how can you possibly blame BT mod for a dying player base?
The fault lies solely with Flayra and co's horrible "balance" and design. They are the ones who got the game into the mess it's currently in. Sewlek is here to dig it out. As far as I've seen sewlek is trying to lower the skill floor, rather than doing what Flayra has done and severely lower the skill ceiling.
and I disagree, I believe it's because of terrible performance (albeit way better now thanks to the community as usual), an incredibly low skill ceiling and really un-fun and tedious gameplay/mechanics. All of which, BT is vastly changing/improving.
No, that was us competitive players. I and many others mastered and then got frustrated with this game so fast. I won't say bored because it was worse than boredom, it was extremely annoying having your skill artificially limited so much. BT has improved this greatly and that helps casual players also, as once a casual player does eventually get good, they are rewarded for their time and effort and also have enjoyed the process alot more.
I agree with most of what you said, but the part about a lower skill ceiling is simply not true, I've seen some really amazing fades in BT...
---Hidden Game Effects and Numbers---
The "Self weld while welding something else" effect is not something I agree with. The main issue I have with it, is that it may be not obvious to a new player and its almost like a hidden behind the scenes mechanic. The Alien lifeforms having different upgrade costs is another example of hidden game mechanics that I feel need to be made more obvious to players. I do not completely agree with this system, as it appears to be in place only to allow aliens to change upgrades on the fly without large amounts of evolution changing spam on higher lifeforms. I think a better solution should be developed to allow Aliens to change upgrades without these hidden Pres costs per lifeform type and base lifefrom cost changes.
---Researching Alien Abilities---
I think the Biomass system has allot of potential but the Alien abilities being moved to individual chambers for research instead of the hive, produced a large number of complications when I tried out the Mod.
Initially I had trouble finding which chamber is associated with which ability type and it was unclear that I could only do one research per category at a time like bile-bomb or umbra in the 'crag' category. I am also unsure if there is a point that the team could actually lose these upgrades if all the same chamber types were destroyed or the team's biomass was reduced.
The requirements for the current Ability upgrade system in Vanilla NS2 is much more clear in terms of the ability's requirements as it clearly states how many hives are required for each upgrade to be researched and to remain active. I would much prefer that the standard chambers remain just that, standard chambers and are in the game solely for their individual passive auras and bonuses. I also think that the commander would find it much easier if he/she only had to navigate to one of the easily locatable Hives on the map's tech points to perform all the required team upgrades and research, rather than looking for small chambers around the map.
---Biomass Progress Bar---
The current interface element showing the progress of the team's biomass would be better off with individual pointers along the bar to show where each point of biomass is located. I think this is important because the 'progress-bar' only effectively shows my current biomass out of the maximum number, and when each Alien ability will become available.
It can be hard to gauge what percentage of a new point of biomass the team is at from the non-hive structure bonuses. Its hard to tell if the team is at 1% or 99% progress to receiving a new point of biomass from normal structures.
---Building With Drifters---
I like the Idea of drifters building alien structures and what it can offer to the game. But I personally struggle a great deal with the games current commander interface when constantly shifting from the build, support and unit menus to get things done.
In order to build now, I must constantly shift from the support menu to drop Cysts, the build menu to drop chambers, the Hive's menu to build more drifters and then control the drifter to actually build a structure, while constantly shifting my commander view between these different places on the map. The process of building structures has been spread out over far too many menus for the Alien team and there are now far too many actions involved for this important game element.
On a side note: I would love to see the NS2 interface combined with a MMORPG style interface with Buildings, Unit controls, and upgrades located in the bottom right window and selected units and commander abilities located on a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen that become visible as they are unlocked/researched. This would at least remove my need to change menus in order to drop cysts, and may even make commander abilities like medpacks, bone-walls, or scans easier for new commanders to control and get used to.
---Drifter Build Cooldown---
Having a cooldown for building drifters as opposed to a standard build time is another aspect of the game that feels inconsistent to me.
I am assuming that having a cooldown rather than a standard build timer was implemented to allow both hive upgrades and drifters to be built at the same time. However, I feel this causes issues when you compare it to how the 'standard-team-research-buttons' or a Robotics Factory works with their build timers rather than a set cooldowns to unlock research and construct units. The majority of the confusion stems from me having to get used to placing the 'Rally-point' from the Hive, prior to hitting the Drifter button. This differs from the robotics factory as it allows you place the 'Rally-point' before or shortly after pressing the MAC or ARC button during the build time.
I have also associated cooldowns with the Commander's special abilities such as Bone-walls and Nano-shields, and it feels inconsistent and strange to have this rule suddenly apply to the building of units as well.
We saw marine movement enhanced and skulks reduced.
I have been saying since those changes that aliens (mostly skulk play) is not fun and marines are much more fun throughout the game even with just LMG.
Given most new players dont play anything other than skulk (for long) this creates a situation where they only want to play one side of the match...and find the other side too daunting.
As such they dont bother investing the hours needed to get the basics of alien game play down.
Having top players bored is not a bad thing...if it promotes a casual gaming experience that draws and maintains casual players.
What we have currently is a game thats overly daunting and hard to learn (especially aliens), adding in skill based movement simply complicates this further.
I dont class learning to play as simply being able to load a map and get fragged, but to do much other than this takes longer than most casual players will invest (let alone maintain).
Sure we need a comp scene...but first we need to have a casual playing base. Once we have that we should start worrying about keeping the players who cap out the current skill ceiling (sure I will get flamed for saying it).
We need a lot more of the former if we want to have many/any of the later in the years to come.
Some ppl can set world records for donkey kong....re-building a game to their standard would mean most of us would couldn't get past the second level.
It's so sad to see one of my favorite games take such a nosedive and getting detached from the casuals. I had a lot of faith in you UWE, but you have proven over the last few months that you are not up to this task. Your game is dying and you are pressing all the wrong panic-buttons in a vein attempt at punching some life into it again. This is not meant specifically for docking, but just about every patch or change(or for that matter a lot of the forum posts by UWE themselves or others part of the team in some way). Cocky over-the-top attitude picking on the little casual guy for being wrong in his opinion(wtf?), and the rest of the "i-love-you-UWE"-group joins in naturally, and you allow this. I see blatant ad hominem go ignored because its in support of you, while other posts that barely touch on sarcasm gets slammed down hard. Granted I've seen a lot worse, but not expected after all the contact from NS1. Anyways, drifting off the point:
Your game is dying because you have catered too much to the competitive scene and your group of testers, while taking too long to fix what needed to be fixed(I.e. performance). The few casuals you have left are leaving, hell I even had 4 people on my list deleting the game after docking got out and the stuff about BT was announced, for them it was the famous drop(2 of them originally recommended the game and the whole reason I bought it in the first place). And I understand them, A LOT, as I've seen changes come about over the last few months that have gone so against what the "common word" on servers were, but instead because the competitive scene didn't like something. This is quite obvious by how people are regularly leaving your game even after all these patches and changes that have come about, you are not giving them(casuals) what they want.
But we can do hyperbole and say it's super complicated, when it's actually easier, but ok.
Can you list the changes made that favor the comp community and harm the pub? Only one I can think of is the whip nerf but a dev explained why time wasn't yet put into getting them functional again. What specific changes were made that specifically benefits the comp community and at the same time hurts the pub one?
some cheese to the whine? :P
Ns2 player numbers are droping and will keep droping.
So something need to be done. A relaunch of thegame to get new players in and hopefully to stay is the only way to go.
The Vanilla game couldnt get people to stay in the game apparently.
There are still people using Firefox 8 or Explorer 4, people still use old cell phones and other OLD crap. Because changes are so "diffcult".
But these people, lucky for the humanity, are a majority and will stay as such.
And to speak of the comp scene, these players have done a lot for the casual players. And they are the reason most of the casual players are still playing this game.
@mendasp
the biggest issue is that ppl cry without trying it out or understanding the changes.
You need to play it to understand it ...
If u read all the changes line by line without having played a single round i would rage aswell, but these changes combined are a masterpeace.
You need to look @ the bigger picture
PS: BT Mod is 10 times more fun to watch e.g. Round 3/4. Most casual players like to watch these games more then playing.
We r just missing the plattform to announce these games more to the casual players.
They got 1 dev for the Balance and everyone else of the UWE team is currently working on the performance. You didnt read a single post of them explaining it over and over and over again ... did you?!
sewlek is playing non stop on the HBZ BT server talking to casual players and getting feedback from them.
i would bet $$$ that u didnt even try to gave some "proper" feedback.
and changes for the comp scene which is harming casuals? Please tell me some of these changes
Hive can drop eggs now, without going shift first (definitly comp only)
You can change your upgrades now as alien, switch
Shotgun got nerfed against skulk and buffed vs fades (casuals love to get one shot by a shotgun)
Gorge cost reduced to 5 res (casual hate to play gorge ... make it more expansive otherwhise it will hurt casuals! gorge is to OP)
and so on.
What changes exactly are you referring to? Because I don't understand why some people keep saying the bt mod is making things harder for casual players, when the skill floor is actually being lowered.
For instance, one of the most common complaints was that skulks are not fun to play, because they're too slow and clumsy, and because it's too common to get oneshotted by a decent shotgunner. Well, in the bt mod it's now super easy to pick up a lot of speed with just walljumping (to a degree one could argue they're too fast). Skulks also scale up a bit in HP through the mid-late game. The 75dmg cone is significantly wider. Parasites stay active. And the shotgun has seen a base damage reduction. Combined with more viable upgrades to choose from (regen/celerity now work in combat, phantom and aura are pretty awesome too), this makes skulk play a lot more interesting.
On another note, I do think however, seeing as a lot of people react very hesitant to changes in general, it might be a good idea to try and document the reasoning behind all of the changes a bit better than the current changelog does. If Sewlek could maybe be a bit more clear on what he's trying to achieve with specific changes and just share the overall goal for NS2 he has in mind, I think we'd see much more willingness to give the bt mod a chance.
SMH
Are we talking about the same casual players who run in the middle of the floor as skulks and die over and over again? The current fades who blink/shadow step in (on the ground mind you) and die right away? From what I've seen a large chunk of "casual" players don't even know how to play the current life forums. Now when the BT goes live sure most people might suck right away, but I'm sure a lot of people did when they first installed NS2. But people will learn, they always do. And if you want a leg up now, GO PLAY THE BALANCE MOD.
however, for a possible and eventual NS3, that debt is now paid, and seeing as ill likely be in a wheelchair when that comes out, ill gladly have autotracking smartguns as the marine spawn weapon :P
Agree about the "nanite-induced self-weld". Sure, it's there to help casual players out a bit if nobody else in their team brought a Welder and the comm didn't get a MAC for them. But it makes no frickin' sense whatsoever and is completely hidden.
I don't see a problem with the differing trait costs, though. You can see the cost in the evolution menu for each lifeform when hovering over them. People just need to open their eyes for once again in that menu that they got so used to already until they memorized the changed costs of the new lifeforms.
The change is there to hit two birds with one stone: It allows to re-evolve upgrades for a small fee, depending on the lifeform, and it allows to make some lategame lifeforms available sooner but in a weaker state until they invest more into them.
Skulk = 0 res + 0 res per trait = 0 res cost
Gorge = 5 res + 2 per trait = 5 - 11 res cost
Lerk = 25 res + 4 res per trait = 25 - 37 res cost
Fade = 40 res + 6 res per trait = 40 - 58 res cost
Onos = 60 res + 8 res per trait = 60 - 84 res cost
Which means that on most lifeforms, you are off cheaper with one or two of the available upgrades than in vanilla. And since you don't have all upgrades in the early game anyway, you rarely hit the maximum cost level anyway before you have the map control to afford it easily.
I agree that the current new chamber-based system is a bit confusing and doesn't really add much other than an attempt to allow marines to target more stuff in the alien base and a slight delay/added costs to get specific upgrades.
I am going to quote myself here from the Balance mod thread:
Is that actually still a thing? I thought it was just one of the false informations in the change list of this thread's associated blog post.
Biomass is currently only accumulated through the Hive upgrades, not through any additional structures. Which is why the current progress bar is perfectly fine. It doesn't show any decimals in Insight either after all. (It would probably make more sense to actually show the Biomass in Insight on the tech point description panel in the bottom right, though. It currently shows Power Node HP for CCs and Egg Count for Hives down there, but Egg count is not really important nowadays and eggs are something you can clearly see in the game whereas Biomass is not. And I would also like to see indicators for the currently used amount of Supply Points in Insight.)
Quoting myself again from the Balance mod thread:
But according to Sewlek he dislikes the old way of cloaked Drifters being a permanent free scan for aliens that you could move somewhere and then forget about it.
Imho the change to less-than-100%-cloaked Drifters fixed that problem already, though. Players could still spot Drifters in the vicinity that way, since the distortion was in eye height and thus more easily noticeable than Skulks in corners of ceilings.
A permanent sidebar similar to how it was done in the C&C series from Generals: Zero Hour onwards might be a nice addition for global abilities like Scans, Med Packs, Ammo Packs, Nano Shield, Nutrient Mist, Rupture and Bone Wall.
The current system is more focusing on hotkey users who will type E + A or E + S every second.
But it's so much more enjoyable if the Drifter pops out right when you need it instead of having to wait for it to finish and then sending it somewhere. It reduces the necessary amount of micromanagement and waiting time.
Again... You give no specifics and merely make a claim without any example or evidence??
It only sounds like you dislike having to learn a new game, (which wouldn't effect new players any differently) - not that you have some specific feedback on how the game could be easier to learn?
How do you expect such a thing to be fixed /addressed if you can't even communicate what exactly needs work?
Devs aren't mind readers, ya know.
Nor do they have the resources to setup some theoretical controlled study of new players playing an NS2 Pepsi challenge.
It's up to customers like you to provide useful, specific, detailed feedback.
Pure hyperbole. BT mod tinkers with a lot of aspects of the game, but it's still very much NS2. It's no more difficult than vanilla, it's just a bit different and opens up more gameplay choices.
You don't have to be a competitive clanner to appreciate that. I've never played any game competitively and thoroughly enjoy BT mod, much more than vanilla.
Going to have to agree with IronHorse, for new players it's a new game regardless. NS2 is complicated no matter which way you cut it. The only thing that will make it harder for a n00b to learn is that most n00bs rely on experienced players for advice and for a while we won't know what to tell them. As long as we don't have a free weekend at the same time I don't see it being an issue.
If it were up to me I'd have used the mod jam to work on a single player mode. That would be the best way to learn about the game for a new player. A nice linear experience guiding you through each element of the game. That's a separate issue though in my opinion. Nothing to do with balance other then balance changes could effect how the SP mode would play out.
lets say you are in a really smelly room, yet you have been in this room long enough that you have gotten used to the smell. Now along comes someone who says you should go to another room with a different smell that is less smelly ... yet to you it smells worse than the room you were just in because your not used to this new smell.
The BT skulk movement is better ... but it still smells
That smell... That smelly smell that smells.... smelly...
Anchovies.
*Snip* Keep that language out of here -Ironhorse The perspective of my friends who play on the upcoming balance test is evidence. You and the devs can take it or leave it, I'm not going to debate. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that I made it up or it isn't representative of how some people feel about the game. How about you or anyone else arguing for the BT to replace vanilla bring some evidence that it is more casual friendly if you care about evidence so much.
The devs seem to have the time to poll the opinions of competitve players, and terribad "playtesters" such as yourself. How about they redirect that effort into polling new or casual players (perhaps via an in game poll as previously suggested by others), and then build the game into something that has a chance of attracting more people from these groups.
UWE could shit in a box and replace NS2 with it and people like you would ask for "evidence" that it isn't better, all the while watching the game die.
First off let me say I prob only have 20 hrs total over the whole course of playing the balance mod, so I'm still new to it but I feel I can answer your question. I could say marine, skulk and lerk movement is more newbie friendly. The skulk seems to do the job of lowering the skill floor and raising the skill ceiling at the same time.
Marine movement is more friendly to aliens since you don't have hopping marines that can out jump skulks at close range. This fact alone means I'll be able to rambo a bit less in pubs since a pack of skulks will have a larger chance at taking me down since I can't dance around them to avoid them. For Skulk at first I was approaching it like i had to use A/D to go any where since that's what I had been reading on the forums but it's actually not the case. When you just press w and walljump like live you will noticeably gain speed. It feels much easier and more rewarding to hold w and jump player in the balance mod then live. Lerk is fairly similar in flight characteristics except you could say its more newbie friendly becuase you can accelerate quicker when flapping. This provides better escape maneuvers. For the naturally a lower HP lifeform it's nice to have some escape ability.
Aura is also an ability that will GREATLY help the casual gamer. Give your casual gamer limited range wallhacks that tell them the marines HP (as in low, medium and high) and you will greatly improve their survivabiltiy. No more running around a corner into 4 shotgun marines. No going around a corner to a shotgunner camping the corner to blast your 30 pres lerk.
As much as I hate to fucking admit it but the wider bullet spread will also help your casual gamer get kills up close since they don't have to track skulks pixel perfect. This lowers the skill floor at the cost of reducing the skill ceiling.
I'm sure I could think of more things if I played more of the mod.
Just gonna quote Aioros here
Also:
- the removal of glancing bites (it is way easier to kill marines, and you don't need to be imba pro at alien movement, you just need to be sneaky like before)
- the self weld (most comp players would argue it should be taken out, yet it is still in because of feedback of casual players who were afraid of not getting welded on pub servers)
edit: AND sewlek fixed the sound bug skulks make when they touch the ground, but I dont know if that counts.