Linux support should have been on a separate patch and had a market campaign specifically for it. Not only would this have gotten more exposure about the Linux support, but UWE also would have been able to specifically focus on all the issues that it brought with it rather than trying to deal with all the other issues that popped up with the other changes.
As my momma always said, the easiest way to deal with a big problem is to break it into smaller problems. I don't think she realized she was citing a form of divide and conquer, but it's the same thing.
The last TF2 patch was big and there were problems with it. Smaller patches I strongly feel give developers more time to spend on testing and streamlining. Doing a little bit at a time allows people to acclimate. Dropping major changes on them in two months doesn't.
I think with video games, slow and steady wins the race.
It's sad to think that almost a year after release, that UWE still suffers from the same problem which is the fact that their communication with their fans and consumers is so god awful.
They've had this same issue since the release of the preorder "2009" trailer: UWE sucks at communication with the community. Cory is about the only redeeming person in regards to this, but even then he only appears after the fact. Looking at a lot of the controversies, you'll see that: first UWE does something bad/questionable (usually with silence) followed by the community lashing out and finally Cory will post actually giving some insight into why it happened. This same process just occurred with the "beta" patch they did. It also happened with the switch from Alpha to Beta. The reinforced program is also... extremely lacking in concrete information, although Cory has yet to respond.
It's frustrating to see them suffer from a problem like this so chronically. UWE isn't just some shitty developer like HiRez. They're a group of passionate people and it shows in the game and the way they approach development. Yet they constantly stress the relationship between the community and themselves even after the fact that the game isn't where it should be, one year after release. I mean seriously. Loading times that are, frankly, unacceptable for a modern title. Performance in-game is sub-par and the game is seriously lacking in the polish department (proper tutorials, etc).
I hope one day they truly address this problem. Communication and resisting temptation for bad choices is all UWE needs to be a great developer, IMO.
As with the past versions, this engine loves SLI and I don't see any fps degradation (other than the fact I have to still use DX9, DX11 disables my SLI). I still roll with 130 fps almost entirely with GTX 670 4gb SLI, just as I always have. I have seen zero of this loss of fps. If I use 1 670, I see almost half the fps as when using the SLI, so this engine really loves the SLI, as much as Crysis 3 does ( 98 % usage across both cards, powered by a 5 ghz 2600k i7)
and how many people do you think can overclock to 5ghz? if you know even anything about ns2 performance, you'll know that gpu is almost always never the bottleneck. who cares if you have ZOMG BEST GFX CARD ON SLI BEAT THAT MOFO.
i take this post as you shitting down the throats of people who can't afford to overclock to 5ghz... or pay 75 bucks for a few skins like what you did.
BF3 on ultra, smooth as butter... update to NS2... lag fest, awful performace and orange lines to make it look like the worst looking game ever made.... whats not to moan about. Oh yeah, UWE had my money before a line of code was written and I would put my hand in my pocket again if they would just STOP MESSING WITH THE GAME!!!
Personally, I find it difficult to praise a lot of what has happened with the game, it does not read very positively.
The game was released late, and in a poor state even when late, for months patches were released to try to fix what was wrong with it, the game became more functional over time but gameplay complaints were still raised near-constantly. UWE releases patches which introduce necessary features which should have been present at launch, and calls them 'free expansions' (and makes much show of this, which gives a distinct impression of fishing for praise, if you give someone a present you don't keep telling them 'by the way, you didn't have to pay for that, I paid for that for you you know') Eventually the game director throws in the towel and hands off balance to somebody else, which is a relatively clear admission that the game was pretty broken on arrival if it requires a complete redesign of many of the gameplay mechanics to 'fix balance problems'.
Subsequently there have been a succession of sweeping changes which completely alter the dynamics of the game, this is sold as a good thing because it means constant improvement, yet this ignores the fact that the game has been out for a long time now, and has been in need of constant improvement.
And now we are at the point of a build being released with many issues in it, again. Followed by a rather insulting letter saying 'you guys ought to be grateful for all the support we're giving to our game that desperately needs support, so please give us more money so you can have your completed game sometime in the future, we're not sure when.'
UWE constantly markets themselves as being different from other companies, caring about their customers and ever so generous with their support, and how their game is not only excellent but each patch makes it even more excellent. Yet, their actions increasingly make this difficult to believe, if the game is so wonderful, why does it need so many patches? Why are so many of them poor quality? Why the constant reminders that we need to be grateful for the support you should expect from a company who releases an unfinished product? Many people paid far in excess of the price of the game on release, either in collector's editions or multiple copies. Do they need to be grateful for the magnanimity of the UWE developers? Should they shell out more money to help fix the game maybe, sometime in the future?
UWE's actions are far more like kerberos, the creators of Sword of the Stars 2, infamous for their treatment of their customers after their terrible launch, than a 'different' and upstanding indie developer.
This company has been gifted with a fanbase which offers more financial support to the developers than any other I have ever seen, and for all the honeyed words in the world, the actions and results given by the developers are not deserving of the kind of devotion they receive. It is a year since release, the game still does not run properly, the gameplay still receiving many complaints, the game is still in the process of a massive balance overhaul and receiving poorly tested and rushed patches. You are not delivering, UWE, that is shameful and unfair to the many. many people who have supported your game far more than I have.
It's sad to think that almost a year after release, that UWE still suffers from the same problem which is the fact that their communication with their fans and consumers is so god awful.
They've had this same issue since the release of the preorder "2009" trailer: UWE sucks at communication with the community. Cory is about the only redeeming person in regards to this, but even then he only appears after the fact. Looking at a lot of the controversies, you'll see that: first UWE does something bad/questionable (usually with silence) followed by the community lashing out and finally Cory will post actually giving some insight into why it happened. This same process just occurred with the "beta" patch they did. It also happened with the switch from Alpha to Beta. The reinforced program is also... extremely lacking in concrete information, although Cory has yet to respond.
It's frustrating to see them suffer from a problem like this so chronically. UWE isn't just some shitty developer like HiRez. They're a group of passionate people and it shows in the game and the way they approach development. Yet they constantly stress the relationship between the community and themselves even after the fact that the game isn't where it should be, one year after release. I mean seriously. Loading times that are, frankly, unacceptable for a modern title. Performance in-game is sub-par and the game is seriously lacking in the polish department (proper tutorials, etc).
I hope one day they truly address this problem. Communication and resisting temptation for bad choices is all UWE needs to be a great developer, IMO.
There are some decent tutorials now actually.
I couldn't agree more with the communication issue though. They should really hire someone to do to that for them...
--
I hope we realise that this recent flurry of changes should have happened quite a while ago. While the timing is obviously really bad, it's good to have gameplay finally moving in the right direction after waffling about on an unfinished base ever since release.
Though they were certainly preventable, these current pains are necessary. kinda like when you don't study untill exam week.
It's sad to think that almost a year after release, that UWE still suffers from the same problem which is the fact that their communication with their fans and consumers is so god awful.
Cory is awesome and is usually the bridge of communication between this forum and the dev team. I think he does a great job at it considering he has little obligation to do so whatsoever. He's the art guy. The PR guy talks about socks and kinship.
I think it's unrealistic to expect a thorough briefing before every action UWE does though. I'm content with the level of developer interaction with the community because I'm used to their being none.
There has been a lot of ranting on the forums lately.
I'm trying to understand why and boil it down to as few keywords as possible.
Performance.
Is there anything more? Or is it just about the performance?
Yes performance going backwards is the main reason for me.
Well it might be the whole mouse to screen lag issue rather than fps, I was still getting over 100 fps for the most part, but it did not feel smooth or responsive. It felt like I was playing while drunk.
It also annoys me that they combine patches in combination with a free weekend.
We get a whole heap of potential new players come in, and not only do they experience the worsened performance relative to 250-251 they also get to hear experience players bitching in game chat about how it's gone downhill this patch. Add to that experience people trying to explain where stuff has been hidden on the new alien tech tree when they aren't even sure them selves and you get one poorly time free weekend.
Other things:
New alien vision - what in the actual f%&* was someone thinking when they made this?
Vanilla skulk vs vanilla marine - appears to have been changed to favour marine movement ala 240 horror (could be down to mouse lag idk)
Commanders 0 res
skulk teeth still rotate on walls (from 251) with no option to turn off
Hey guys, we are aware of the crashing and performance issues, and we are working to fix them. We understand this is frustrating and unacceptable for a lot people and apologize if you are affected. While it's no excuse, the past few weeks have been crazy and we've ran into a lot of unusual challenges.
Im understand it thought , but on Steam discussion , new player and free-weekend player are talking about :
1/" Why we have to donate a game full of crash and bug ?"
2/"NS2 have a fame that is bad performance , eat alot of CPU"
3/ They will recomend others that never buy NS2 and get into their "black-list"
I think UWE teams need to make an Offical Sorry Announcement on Steam , to be honest and wish all the best for you guys
It's sad to think that almost a year after release, that UWE still suffers from the same problem which is the fact that their communication with their fans and consumers is so god awful.
They've had this same issue since the release of the preorder "2009" trailer: UWE sucks at communication with the community. Cory is about the only redeeming person in regards to this, but even then he only appears after the fact. Looking at a lot of the controversies, you'll see that: first UWE does something bad/questionable (usually with silence) followed by the community lashing out and finally Cory will post actually giving some insight into why it happened. This same process just occurred with the "beta" patch they did. It also happened with the switch from Alpha to Beta. The reinforced program is also... extremely lacking in concrete information, although Cory has yet to respond.
It's frustrating to see them suffer from a problem like this so chronically. UWE isn't just some shitty developer like HiRez. They're a group of passionate people and it shows in the game and the way they approach development. Yet they constantly stress the relationship between the community and themselves even after the fact that the game isn't where it should be, one year after release. I mean seriously. Loading times that are, frankly, unacceptable for a modern title. Performance in-game is sub-par and the game is seriously lacking in the polish department (proper tutorials, etc).
I hope one day they truly address this problem. Communication and resisting temptation for bad choices is all UWE needs to be a great developer, IMO.
Did you seriously just criticize them for a lack of tutorials when they JUST added new tutorials to the game? I watched my friend play though them last night. Guess what? He found them useful and informative.
I think you lack perspective here. UWE is far ahead of most developers in terms of communication. Look at the monthly updates Hugh does. That's way more information than you normally get from a AAA title. Most information comes out only in press releases and events, there is no explanation of future plans or the process behind any of the content creation.
It's sad to think that almost a year after release, that UWE still suffers from the same problem which is the fact that their communication with their fans and consumers is so god awful.
They've had this same issue since the release of the preorder "2009" trailer: UWE sucks at communication with the community. Cory is about the only redeeming person in regards to this, but even then he only appears after the fact. Looking at a lot of the controversies, you'll see that: first UWE does something bad/questionable (usually with silence) followed by the community lashing out and finally Cory will post actually giving some insight into why it happened. This same process just occurred with the "beta" patch they did. It also happened with the switch from Alpha to Beta. The reinforced program is also... extremely lacking in concrete information, although Cory has yet to respond.
It's frustrating to see them suffer from a problem like this so chronically. UWE isn't just some shitty developer like HiRez. They're a group of passionate people and it shows in the game and the way they approach development. Yet they constantly stress the relationship between the community and themselves even after the fact that the game isn't where it should be, one year after release. I mean seriously. Loading times that are, frankly, unacceptable for a modern title. Performance in-game is sub-par and the game is seriously lacking in the polish department (proper tutorials, etc).
I hope one day they truly address this problem. Communication and resisting temptation for bad choices is all UWE needs to be a great developer, IMO.
Did you seriously just criticize them for a lack of tutorials when they JUST added new tutorials to the game? I watched my friend play though them last night. Guess what? He found them useful and informative.
I think you lack perspective here. UWE is far ahead of most developers in terms of communication. Look at the monthly updates Hugh does. That's way more information than you normally get from a AAA title. Most information comes out only in press releases and events, there is no explanation of future plans or the process behind any of the content creation.
Yes, I did criticize them. My friend played through them and he found they had the opposite effect. He learned more just asking questions over TeamSpeak than he did from the tutorial. YMMV, I guess. I myself am pretty disappointed that the tutorial goes over so little with a game that has so much depth. Basic strategy for each class should be a bare minimum for a tutorial -- although sandbox mode helps a bit in this regard.. just not enough IMO. I don't think anywhere in the game does it mention that you can be shot while "blinking" as a Fade. Maybe it's said in one of the tip videos that do not work for me.
I don't lack perspective. Most triple A titles can afford to ignore their community (e.g. HiRez, Blizzard et cetera). Marketing allows lots of amazing things. Further more most triple A titles don't intentionally release a buggy patch on the main game and expect the community to test it for them unknowingly, either (except Valve). When UWE gets a triple A budget they can do what they want, including ignoring the community who funded them to begin with. When you're asking the community to fund you again? Eh...
BTW I don't keep up on this game anymore, so I am admittedly unaware as to whatever Hugh is doing (he's their PR guy right.. ?). However I am aware of the fact that on Reddit some users were mentioning that UWE had released a buggy patch before the release of Reinforced. I was curious and came here, only to see - in a forum post, no less - that Cory had explained that they were strapped for time. UWE cannot afford PR blunders like that.
It's sad to think that almost a year after release, that UWE still suffers from the same problem which is the fact that their communication with their fans and consumers is so god awful.
Cory is awesome and is usually the bridge of communication between this forum and the dev team. I think he does a great job at it considering he has little obligation to do so whatsoever. He's the art guy. The PR guy talks about socks and kinship.
I think it's unrealistic to expect a thorough briefing before every action UWE does though. I'm content with the level of developer interaction with the community because I'm used to their being none.
I do not expect a thorough briefing over everything. The obviously controversial stuff does, however. Take the "beta" patch they did just recently. They knew this would be taken poorly by the community. Nobody likes their game being broken. It's frustrating, especially when you're completely unaware and you try and solve it yourself. UWE expected the community to magically understand this and not be angry about it. HiRez tier PR move. If UWE had been more upfront about the issue and explained "Hey guys, time is of the essence and shit's broke", I feel that the reaction from the community would've been more tempered. Obviously we will never know.
It was not a very good idea to make a giant patch that requires lot's of refactoring the engine for Linux and few days after that start a giant content update and marketing campaign. Those big changes require testing and you need time for it to get good reports, track issues down and fix them up.
In general I feel the small UWE development team is really working on the wrong stuff. Why add new content or tweak balancing forever. That is something the community can do using mods and the workshop. Fix your closed-source engine no one else can tweak. Performance and stability is unacceptable for a commercial product. Maybe create a http://www.naturalselection2.com/reinforced/ badge that is "Urgent Technical Maintenance" and if a lot of people pledge for it, you are forced to work months only on bug fixes without any new feature additions.
I don't think they lack communication at all, in fact during the big 'balance patch' with that gigantic sewlek thread he was reading and replying to tons of suggestions made, or giving reason to changes
The new tutorial they just added
The rest of your complaints seem to be performance driven and we've had a response that they used lua to help release the game quicker (and lua apparently doesn't support true multi-threading, which is why the game seems to require such a strong single cpu) because they claimed if they had used c++ or what not the game would still not be released and they were running out of funds? -- not sure if this is 100% correct
Also lua is pretty nifty with modding, but I would honestly give UWE best developer award just because they're so interactive; sure they may do something you don't like here and there but honestly compare it to any other games you've played in the past five years, how many of those developers even give a single crap about you? I've had games broken from launch, and never fixed, heck some major developers don't even have a forum to contact them on// or sent support requests through their publishers who then send you pre-automated messages and if it's anything worse then they cannot help you
Also I'd never compare them to hi-rez, no offense to hi-rez but they make some of the worst decisions you can make; especially when they actually just let out a decent title which has a small but failing to grow playerbase, they also just disabled their own forum because they couldn't take the amount of criticisms/suggestions imo and they had pretty much zero communication
Also lua is pretty nifty with modding, but I would honestly give UWE best developer award just because they're so interactive; sure they may do something you don't like here and there but honestly compare it to any other games you've played in the past five years, how many of those developers even give a single crap about you? I've had games broken from launch, and never fixed, heck some major developers don't even have a forum to contact them on// or sent support requests through their publishers who then send you pre-automated messages and if it's anything worse then they cannot help you
don't see how UWE is any different tbh, except maybe them actually trying to entice you to give them more money. maybe that's why they're still patching the game hoping it'll be like ns1 and draw players back every time a patch hits... or asking the community to donate half a million dollars to them.
seriously i'll laugh my ass off if someone paid $75k and told them to make ns1 on spark engine.
I don't think they lack communication at all, in fact during the big 'balance patch' with that gigantic sewlek thread he was reading and replying to tons of suggestions made, or giving reason to changes
First of all, Sewlek has done a mighty fine job considering the present situation, I have no complaints about that. Certainly there are things I'd do different and all that, but it's not the kind of communication people are complaining here.
As for the actual complaint about communication, it's not so much about the amount of communication, it's about the things they communicate. Usually the communication dodges any of the big serious questions or addresses them with extremely vague promises about brighter future.
During the 3 years after the initial promised release, any inquiry about the schedule was met with responses like "Have patience" or "Good things come to those who wait", which is a pretty awkward way to treat a paying customer whose product is more than a year late. The balance complaints got a response article, but it contained only very vague statistics and promise to keep working on the balance, but absolutely no information on how they saw the actual situation and what was done in practise to address the massive issues. The same has been going on for performance too.
You can argue that most companies aren't much better at their communication, but usually they also provide a much more complete product that doesn't have as much ongoing changes and promises of better future. If a company actually launches an incomplete title, it usually maintains a pretty communicative approach regarding their future plan.
I don't think they lack communication at all, in fact during the big 'balance patch' with that gigantic sewlek thread he was reading and replying to tons of suggestions made, or giving reason to changes
First of all, Sewlek has done a mighty fine job considering the present situation, I have no complaints about that. Certainly there are things I'd do different and all that, but it's not the kind of communication people are complaining here.
As for the actual complaint about communication, it's not so much about the amount of communication, it's about the things they communicate. Usually the communication dodges any of the big serious questions or addresses them with extremely vague promises about brighter future.
During the 3 years after the initial promised release, any inquiry about the schedule was met with responses like "Have patience" or "Good things come to those who wait", which is a pretty awkward way to treat a paying customer whose product is more than a year late. The balance complaints got a response article, but it contained only very vague statistics and promise to keep working on the balance, but absolutely no information on how they saw the actual situation and what was done in practise to address the massive issues. The same has been going on for performance too.
You can argue that most companies aren't much better at their communication, but usually they also provide a much more complete product that doesn't have as much ongoing changes and promises of better future. If a company actually launches an incomplete title, it usually maintains a pretty communicative approach regarding their future plan.
That's because if you say something as a dev people hold you to that and expect it. If you say X is coming but really it ends up being Y, people are going to complain about "where is X" "why is X not in"
I don't think they lack communication at all, in fact during the big 'balance patch' with that gigantic sewlek thread he was reading and replying to tons of suggestions made, or giving reason to changes
First of all, Sewlek has done a mighty fine job considering the present situation, I have no complaints about that. Certainly there are things I'd do different and all that, but it's not the kind of communication people are complaining here.
As for the actual complaint about communication, it's not so much about the amount of communication, it's about the things they communicate. Usually the communication dodges any of the big serious questions or addresses them with extremely vague promises about brighter future.
During the 3 years after the initial promised release, any inquiry about the schedule was met with responses like "Have patience" or "Good things come to those who wait", which is a pretty awkward way to treat a paying customer whose product is more than a year late. The balance complaints got a response article, but it contained only very vague statistics and promise to keep working on the balance, but absolutely no information on how they saw the actual situation and what was done in practise to address the massive issues. The same has been going on for performance too.
You can argue that most companies aren't much better at their communication, but usually they also provide a much more complete product that doesn't have as much ongoing changes and promises of better future. If a company actually launches an incomplete title, it usually maintains a pretty communicative approach regarding their future plan.
That's because if you say something as a dev people hold you to that and expect it. If you say X is coming but really it ends up being Y, people are going to complain about "where is X" "why is X not in"
The problem was that they had already made promises directly (release date, sys reqs) and indirectly (releasing a commercial product has certain expectations) and taken money in based on those promises. At that point going back to "don't know" is a pretty awkward move.
Obviously taking a guess can be extremely tough, but I think it's still a reasonable expectation. I doubt there are any easy solutions when something doesn't work as devs had calculated, but coming up with something else than "Have patience" would've definitely been welcome at least.
Here's looking forward to the tricentenary build update! Only 47 more builds to go! Get your golden hats, whizzlers and party poppers ready! Pre-order now to get a limited edition commemorative coin! Struck in sterling silver and rimmed with fine gold, it will make a most impressive tribute to Unknown World's patch update history! Only £2.95 + £1.99 shipping! ORDER NOW!
Comments
As my momma always said, the easiest way to deal with a big problem is to break it into smaller problems. I don't think she realized she was citing a form of divide and conquer, but it's the same thing.
The last TF2 patch was big and there were problems with it. Smaller patches I strongly feel give developers more time to spend on testing and streamlining. Doing a little bit at a time allows people to acclimate. Dropping major changes on them in two months doesn't.
I think with video games, slow and steady wins the race.
They've had this same issue since the release of the preorder "2009" trailer: UWE sucks at communication with the community. Cory is about the only redeeming person in regards to this, but even then he only appears after the fact. Looking at a lot of the controversies, you'll see that: first UWE does something bad/questionable (usually with silence) followed by the community lashing out and finally Cory will post actually giving some insight into why it happened. This same process just occurred with the "beta" patch they did. It also happened with the switch from Alpha to Beta. The reinforced program is also... extremely lacking in concrete information, although Cory has yet to respond.
It's frustrating to see them suffer from a problem like this so chronically. UWE isn't just some shitty developer like HiRez. They're a group of passionate people and it shows in the game and the way they approach development. Yet they constantly stress the relationship between the community and themselves even after the fact that the game isn't where it should be, one year after release. I mean seriously. Loading times that are, frankly, unacceptable for a modern title. Performance in-game is sub-par and the game is seriously lacking in the polish department (proper tutorials, etc).
I hope one day they truly address this problem. Communication and resisting temptation for bad choices is all UWE needs to be a great developer, IMO.
np^^
and how many people do you think can overclock to 5ghz? if you know even anything about ns2 performance, you'll know that gpu is almost always never the bottleneck. who cares if you have ZOMG BEST GFX CARD ON SLI BEAT THAT MOFO.
i take this post as you shitting down the throats of people who can't afford to overclock to 5ghz... or pay 75 bucks for a few skins like what you did.
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=144733
The game was released late, and in a poor state even when late, for months patches were released to try to fix what was wrong with it, the game became more functional over time but gameplay complaints were still raised near-constantly. UWE releases patches which introduce necessary features which should have been present at launch, and calls them 'free expansions' (and makes much show of this, which gives a distinct impression of fishing for praise, if you give someone a present you don't keep telling them 'by the way, you didn't have to pay for that, I paid for that for you you know') Eventually the game director throws in the towel and hands off balance to somebody else, which is a relatively clear admission that the game was pretty broken on arrival if it requires a complete redesign of many of the gameplay mechanics to 'fix balance problems'.
Subsequently there have been a succession of sweeping changes which completely alter the dynamics of the game, this is sold as a good thing because it means constant improvement, yet this ignores the fact that the game has been out for a long time now, and has been in need of constant improvement.
And now we are at the point of a build being released with many issues in it, again. Followed by a rather insulting letter saying 'you guys ought to be grateful for all the support we're giving to our game that desperately needs support, so please give us more money so you can have your completed game sometime in the future, we're not sure when.'
UWE constantly markets themselves as being different from other companies, caring about their customers and ever so generous with their support, and how their game is not only excellent but each patch makes it even more excellent. Yet, their actions increasingly make this difficult to believe, if the game is so wonderful, why does it need so many patches? Why are so many of them poor quality? Why the constant reminders that we need to be grateful for the support you should expect from a company who releases an unfinished product? Many people paid far in excess of the price of the game on release, either in collector's editions or multiple copies. Do they need to be grateful for the magnanimity of the UWE developers? Should they shell out more money to help fix the game maybe, sometime in the future?
UWE's actions are far more like kerberos, the creators of Sword of the Stars 2, infamous for their treatment of their customers after their terrible launch, than a 'different' and upstanding indie developer.
This company has been gifted with a fanbase which offers more financial support to the developers than any other I have ever seen, and for all the honeyed words in the world, the actions and results given by the developers are not deserving of the kind of devotion they receive. It is a year since release, the game still does not run properly, the gameplay still receiving many complaints, the game is still in the process of a massive balance overhaul and receiving poorly tested and rushed patches. You are not delivering, UWE, that is shameful and unfair to the many. many people who have supported your game far more than I have.
There are some decent tutorials now actually.
I couldn't agree more with the communication issue though. They should really hire someone to do to that for them...
--
I hope we realise that this recent flurry of changes should have happened quite a while ago. While the timing is obviously really bad, it's good to have gameplay finally moving in the right direction after waffling about on an unfinished base ever since release.
Though they were certainly preventable, these current pains are necessary. kinda like when you don't study untill exam week.
Cory is awesome and is usually the bridge of communication between this forum and the dev team. I think he does a great job at it considering he has little obligation to do so whatsoever. He's the art guy. The PR guy talks about socks and kinship.
I think it's unrealistic to expect a thorough briefing before every action UWE does though. I'm content with the level of developer interaction with the community because I'm used to their being none.
Yes performance going backwards is the main reason for me.
Well it might be the whole mouse to screen lag issue rather than fps, I was still getting over 100 fps for the most part, but it did not feel smooth or responsive. It felt like I was playing while drunk.
It also annoys me that they combine patches in combination with a free weekend.
We get a whole heap of potential new players come in, and not only do they experience the worsened performance relative to 250-251 they also get to hear experience players bitching in game chat about how it's gone downhill this patch. Add to that experience people trying to explain where stuff has been hidden on the new alien tech tree when they aren't even sure them selves and you get one poorly time free weekend.
Other things:
New alien vision - what in the actual f%&* was someone thinking when they made this?
Vanilla skulk vs vanilla marine - appears to have been changed to favour marine movement ala 240 horror (could be down to mouse lag idk)
Commanders 0 res
skulk teeth still rotate on walls (from 251) with no option to turn off
1/" Why we have to donate a game full of crash and bug ?"
2/"NS2 have a fame that is bad performance , eat alot of CPU"
3/ They will recomend others that never buy NS2 and get into their "black-list"
I think UWE teams need to make an Offical Sorry Announcement on Steam , to be honest and wish all the best for you guys
Did you seriously just criticize them for a lack of tutorials when they JUST added new tutorials to the game? I watched my friend play though them last night. Guess what? He found them useful and informative.
I think you lack perspective here. UWE is far ahead of most developers in terms of communication. Look at the monthly updates Hugh does. That's way more information than you normally get from a AAA title. Most information comes out only in press releases and events, there is no explanation of future plans or the process behind any of the content creation.
Yes, I did criticize them. My friend played through them and he found they had the opposite effect. He learned more just asking questions over TeamSpeak than he did from the tutorial. YMMV, I guess. I myself am pretty disappointed that the tutorial goes over so little with a game that has so much depth. Basic strategy for each class should be a bare minimum for a tutorial -- although sandbox mode helps a bit in this regard.. just not enough IMO. I don't think anywhere in the game does it mention that you can be shot while "blinking" as a Fade. Maybe it's said in one of the tip videos that do not work for me.
I don't lack perspective. Most triple A titles can afford to ignore their community (e.g. HiRez, Blizzard et cetera). Marketing allows lots of amazing things. Further more most triple A titles don't intentionally release a buggy patch on the main game and expect the community to test it for them unknowingly, either (except Valve). When UWE gets a triple A budget they can do what they want, including ignoring the community who funded them to begin with. When you're asking the community to fund you again? Eh...
BTW I don't keep up on this game anymore, so I am admittedly unaware as to whatever Hugh is doing (he's their PR guy right.. ?). However I am aware of the fact that on Reddit some users were mentioning that UWE had released a buggy patch before the release of Reinforced. I was curious and came here, only to see - in a forum post, no less - that Cory had explained that they were strapped for time. UWE cannot afford PR blunders like that.
Edit:
I do not expect a thorough briefing over everything. The obviously controversial stuff does, however. Take the "beta" patch they did just recently. They knew this would be taken poorly by the community. Nobody likes their game being broken. It's frustrating, especially when you're completely unaware and you try and solve it yourself. UWE expected the community to magically understand this and not be angry about it. HiRez tier PR move. If UWE had been more upfront about the issue and explained "Hey guys, time is of the essence and shit's broke", I feel that the reaction from the community would've been more tempered. Obviously we will never know.
Mostly a lot of it is whilst i am tabbed out and the game is in full screen window mode.
Others are random crashes during GAME.
I was commanding an alien team for an hour and a half and my game just crashed and i lost my spot, NS2 has never done this before.
In general I feel the small UWE development team is really working on the wrong stuff. Why add new content or tweak balancing forever. That is something the community can do using mods and the workshop. Fix your closed-source engine no one else can tweak. Performance and stability is unacceptable for a commercial product. Maybe create a http://www.naturalselection2.com/reinforced/ badge that is "Urgent Technical Maintenance" and if a lot of people pledge for it, you are forced to work months only on bug fixes without any new feature additions.
Heh.
Without having played that much I think this is probably the best patch so far.
I don't think they lack communication at all, in fact during the big 'balance patch' with that gigantic sewlek thread he was reading and replying to tons of suggestions made, or giving reason to changes
The new tutorial they just added
The rest of your complaints seem to be performance driven and we've had a response that they used lua to help release the game quicker (and lua apparently doesn't support true multi-threading, which is why the game seems to require such a strong single cpu) because they claimed if they had used c++ or what not the game would still not be released and they were running out of funds? -- not sure if this is 100% correct
Also lua is pretty nifty with modding, but I would honestly give UWE best developer award just because they're so interactive; sure they may do something you don't like here and there but honestly compare it to any other games you've played in the past five years, how many of those developers even give a single crap about you? I've had games broken from launch, and never fixed, heck some major developers don't even have a forum to contact them on// or sent support requests through their publishers who then send you pre-automated messages and if it's anything worse then they cannot help you
Also I'd never compare them to hi-rez, no offense to hi-rez but they make some of the worst decisions you can make; especially when they actually just let out a decent title which has a small but failing to grow playerbase, they also just disabled their own forum because they couldn't take the amount of criticisms/suggestions imo and they had pretty much zero communication
no shit considering what happened on ausns2 forums.
don't see how UWE is any different tbh, except maybe them actually trying to entice you to give them more money. maybe that's why they're still patching the game hoping it'll be like ns1 and draw players back every time a patch hits... or asking the community to donate half a million dollars to them.
seriously i'll laugh my ass off if someone paid $75k and told them to make ns1 on spark engine.
Thx Steve! Don't forget to sleep and eat.
As for the actual complaint about communication, it's not so much about the amount of communication, it's about the things they communicate. Usually the communication dodges any of the big serious questions or addresses them with extremely vague promises about brighter future.
During the 3 years after the initial promised release, any inquiry about the schedule was met with responses like "Have patience" or "Good things come to those who wait", which is a pretty awkward way to treat a paying customer whose product is more than a year late. The balance complaints got a response article, but it contained only very vague statistics and promise to keep working on the balance, but absolutely no information on how they saw the actual situation and what was done in practise to address the massive issues. The same has been going on for performance too.
You can argue that most companies aren't much better at their communication, but usually they also provide a much more complete product that doesn't have as much ongoing changes and promises of better future. If a company actually launches an incomplete title, it usually maintains a pretty communicative approach regarding their future plan.
That's because if you say something as a dev people hold you to that and expect it. If you say X is coming but really it ends up being Y, people are going to complain about "where is X" "why is X not in"
Obviously taking a guess can be extremely tough, but I think it's still a reasonable expectation. I doubt there are any easy solutions when something doesn't work as devs had calculated, but coming up with something else than "Have patience" would've definitely been welcome at least.