300 hours later; my thoughts on NS2
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Oregon Join Date: 2013-11-20 Member: 189469Members, Reinforced - Silver
Oregon Join Date: 2013-11-20 Member: 189469Members, Reinforced - Silver
Hello everyone, thanks for taking the time to read this
I wanted to share a few thoughts I have about NS2 with the community and the developers in the hopes to improve the game in the future.
First of all I'd like to say that I love NS2 and think it is one of the most fun and unique shooters out there right now. I'm surprised the online population isn't bigger. That being said, there are a few things I think could use improvement.
The first thing I think could be improved is the commander experience. Of the two commanders, alien and marine, I think marine commander is by far the more interesting. The healthpack dropping ability is one of the best designed features of either commander. It gives the commander a way to directly influence the outcome of a fight, it takes practice to get good at dropping medpacks directly onto marines, and it takes a while to learn when to drop a healthpack and when to conserve resources.
Alien commander on the other hand, doesn't seem to have nearly as many choices to make. Shift, Crag, Shade has become such a standard hive order that players actually get upset when a commander does something else. The lumping together of all a lifeform's upgrades into one researchable trait has greatly reduced the number of interesting build orders available to an alien commander.
Alien commanders also have much less macroing to do. Drifters, while certainly useful, are not as interesting or gamechanging as health packs. Their unwieldiness also makes them cumbersome to use. A drifter that is getting shot, for example, will often simply refuse to move when ordered. Alien commanders are also limited in their ability to research upgrades by the number of hives they control. If their team cannot gain control of a second and third hive location, they soon run out of upgrades to research.
More than anything, the lack of useful and wieldy micro abilities hold back the Alien commander experience. Nutrient mist, echo, and enzyme cloud are the most useful of the microing abilities, but they are not nearly as difficult to master use of as healthpacks.
The requirement of infestation to use most of an Alien commander's abilities also holds back many of the more useful ones.
Bone wall can be very useful, but is often accidentally detrimental to the alien team because it paralyzes alien lifeforms along with marines.
Rupture seems almost useless. It costs 2 team resources, yet often fails to do a single point of damage to enemy marines armor for mysterious reasons.
Mucous Membrane is useful, but not very cost efficient until the late game when a commander has nothing else to spend their resources on. The inability to target a specific lifeform means that the intended target often leaves the area of effect before mucous membrane has worn off.
Here is my list of suggestions for improving Alien Commander:
- Drifters should immediately go towards the direction they are ordered when ordere there (no delay from turning around or getting shot)
- Drifters ordered to follow a lifeforms should always position themselves behind the lifeform (so they would move when the lifeform turned around)
- Lifeform specific upgrades should be split into individual unlocks instead of being clumped together into one researchable item
- Lifeform upgrades should be organized into tiers (tier 1 upgrades require 1 hive, tier 2 requires 2 hives, etc.)
- Leap should be a tier 1 ability
- Echoing structures should be a starting ability, not dependent on having a shift hive (this would both nerf the shift hive, and give the commander more opportunities to micro)
- Bile Bomb should be a tier 2 upgrade
- Crag healing rate should be buffed
- Crag healing and hive healing should not be able to overlap on lifeforms
- Fade eggs should be droppable at tier 2
The only other area of NS2 that I think could use some improvement is Marine weaponry. Three weapons in particular seem proplematic; Mines, Grenade Launchers, and Flamethrowers.
Mines feel out of place in NS2. A droppable entity that instakills skulks and blows a large chunk of health off lerks and fades seems like an irritating and pointless addition to the Marine arsenal. There are few things more frustrating in an FPS than getting instakilled by something you didn't know was there, that did so without requiring any effort from another player other than its placement. If marines need a way to keep skulks from harassing their resources, sentries or better yet jetpacks seem like a much better solution than mines.
The flamethrower suffers from a number of issues. For starters, it lights everything on fire. This causes huge drops in FPS for everyone involved while simultaneously making the weapon a whole lot spammier and much more irritating to fight. Half of the flamethrowers power comes from its ability to cut an enemy lifeforms frames in half, making the user much harder to attack. Marines using the flamethrower should not get kills just because an enemy walked over a patch of ground they lit on fire a few seconds ago. It isn't fun for either party involved.
To improve this weapon, I would suggest the following changes:
- the weapon should not light enemy players or neutral objects on fire
- The weapon should not take so long to use after switching to it from a pistol or welder
- The weapon should not require reloading, but rather have one large clip
- The cone of flames should be narrower, and the damage taken by an enemy should be based on how far they were from the tip of the weapon
Lastly, the grenade launcher. Here are the problems with the weapon as I see them:
- grenades are too hard for enemies to see
- grenades can still one shot skulks after bouncing
- the weapon in general is too spammy
I doubt any of you have played Halo Reach, but if you have you might be familiar with its iteration of the grenade launcher. It is perhaps the only grenade launcher I have ever like in an FPS. Here is a clip that explains how it works. Skip to 50 seconds in.
I think if the grenade launcher was changed to work more like the Halo Reach grenade launcher it would be more enjoyable for all those involved, marines and aliens alike.
Thanks to everyone who made it this far. I realize this post may seem somewhat negative, but please know that these are the few things that I do think could use improvement in NS2. There are many, many more things about it that I love and am in awe of the designers for coming up with. (The inclusion of an RTS experience into an FPS being one).
To the creators at Unknown worlds and the modding community who have created so many interesting variants of this game, I say thank you. I can't wait for a chance to play NS3.
I wanted to share a few thoughts I have about NS2 with the community and the developers in the hopes to improve the game in the future.
First of all I'd like to say that I love NS2 and think it is one of the most fun and unique shooters out there right now. I'm surprised the online population isn't bigger. That being said, there are a few things I think could use improvement.
The first thing I think could be improved is the commander experience. Of the two commanders, alien and marine, I think marine commander is by far the more interesting. The healthpack dropping ability is one of the best designed features of either commander. It gives the commander a way to directly influence the outcome of a fight, it takes practice to get good at dropping medpacks directly onto marines, and it takes a while to learn when to drop a healthpack and when to conserve resources.
Alien commander on the other hand, doesn't seem to have nearly as many choices to make. Shift, Crag, Shade has become such a standard hive order that players actually get upset when a commander does something else. The lumping together of all a lifeform's upgrades into one researchable trait has greatly reduced the number of interesting build orders available to an alien commander.
Alien commanders also have much less macroing to do. Drifters, while certainly useful, are not as interesting or gamechanging as health packs. Their unwieldiness also makes them cumbersome to use. A drifter that is getting shot, for example, will often simply refuse to move when ordered. Alien commanders are also limited in their ability to research upgrades by the number of hives they control. If their team cannot gain control of a second and third hive location, they soon run out of upgrades to research.
More than anything, the lack of useful and wieldy micro abilities hold back the Alien commander experience. Nutrient mist, echo, and enzyme cloud are the most useful of the microing abilities, but they are not nearly as difficult to master use of as healthpacks.
The requirement of infestation to use most of an Alien commander's abilities also holds back many of the more useful ones.
Bone wall can be very useful, but is often accidentally detrimental to the alien team because it paralyzes alien lifeforms along with marines.
Rupture seems almost useless. It costs 2 team resources, yet often fails to do a single point of damage to enemy marines armor for mysterious reasons.
Mucous Membrane is useful, but not very cost efficient until the late game when a commander has nothing else to spend their resources on. The inability to target a specific lifeform means that the intended target often leaves the area of effect before mucous membrane has worn off.
Here is my list of suggestions for improving Alien Commander:
- Drifters should immediately go towards the direction they are ordered when ordere there (no delay from turning around or getting shot)
- Drifters ordered to follow a lifeforms should always position themselves behind the lifeform (so they would move when the lifeform turned around)
- Lifeform specific upgrades should be split into individual unlocks instead of being clumped together into one researchable item
- Lifeform upgrades should be organized into tiers (tier 1 upgrades require 1 hive, tier 2 requires 2 hives, etc.)
- Leap should be a tier 1 ability
- Echoing structures should be a starting ability, not dependent on having a shift hive (this would both nerf the shift hive, and give the commander more opportunities to micro)
- Bile Bomb should be a tier 2 upgrade
- Crag healing rate should be buffed
- Crag healing and hive healing should not be able to overlap on lifeforms
- Fade eggs should be droppable at tier 2
The only other area of NS2 that I think could use some improvement is Marine weaponry. Three weapons in particular seem proplematic; Mines, Grenade Launchers, and Flamethrowers.
Mines feel out of place in NS2. A droppable entity that instakills skulks and blows a large chunk of health off lerks and fades seems like an irritating and pointless addition to the Marine arsenal. There are few things more frustrating in an FPS than getting instakilled by something you didn't know was there, that did so without requiring any effort from another player other than its placement. If marines need a way to keep skulks from harassing their resources, sentries or better yet jetpacks seem like a much better solution than mines.
The flamethrower suffers from a number of issues. For starters, it lights everything on fire. This causes huge drops in FPS for everyone involved while simultaneously making the weapon a whole lot spammier and much more irritating to fight. Half of the flamethrowers power comes from its ability to cut an enemy lifeforms frames in half, making the user much harder to attack. Marines using the flamethrower should not get kills just because an enemy walked over a patch of ground they lit on fire a few seconds ago. It isn't fun for either party involved.
To improve this weapon, I would suggest the following changes:
- the weapon should not light enemy players or neutral objects on fire
- The weapon should not take so long to use after switching to it from a pistol or welder
- The weapon should not require reloading, but rather have one large clip
- The cone of flames should be narrower, and the damage taken by an enemy should be based on how far they were from the tip of the weapon
Lastly, the grenade launcher. Here are the problems with the weapon as I see them:
- grenades are too hard for enemies to see
- grenades can still one shot skulks after bouncing
- the weapon in general is too spammy
I doubt any of you have played Halo Reach, but if you have you might be familiar with its iteration of the grenade launcher. It is perhaps the only grenade launcher I have ever like in an FPS. Here is a clip that explains how it works. Skip to 50 seconds in.
I think if the grenade launcher was changed to work more like the Halo Reach grenade launcher it would be more enjoyable for all those involved, marines and aliens alike.
Thanks to everyone who made it this far. I realize this post may seem somewhat negative, but please know that these are the few things that I do think could use improvement in NS2. There are many, many more things about it that I love and am in awe of the designers for coming up with. (The inclusion of an RTS experience into an FPS being one).
To the creators at Unknown worlds and the modding community who have created so many interesting variants of this game, I say thank you. I can't wait for a chance to play NS3.
Comments
A drifters abilities can and do have a strong influence in combat when used. Enzyme increases dps X2. Mucous membrane is really strong. Look at the b260 thread to see the debate over how OP it is.
I am pretty confident the flamethrower does do more damage the closer you are too it. Although this is not in the outdated wiki.
At one point in time upgrades were based on tiers. Not in the same way you described it. We moved on from that. I will let someone more articulate than I describe why. Even still with biomass things are relatively tiered.
I do like the idea of one large clip in the flamethrower, but it already lasts forever on one clip so this feels unnecessary. I do agree that the alien khammander's abilities, not counting the drifters, are not as strong as the marine commanders but this fits in with the asymmetrical gameplay.
Bilebomb being a tier 2 upgrade is a bad idea because it makes turret lockdowns much too difficult to break.
Leap being tier 1 was tried a long time ago in beta, and it was deemed too powerful for skulks to have so early in the game.
What would you suggest be the perk of the shift hive should echo be made universal? That's part of the opportunity cost to gain access to echo earlier in the game because of the tactical benefits it provides. There would have to be substantial changes elsewhere should echo be available as is regardless of hive choice.
And your balance suggestions (while certainly well thought out and original) make little sense.
-Mines are to stop early game harass, they fit very well in NS2, are extremely easy to find, and remove.
-Leap is stuck on two hives because skulks would completely outclass marines at the start otherwise.
-Flamethrower is a flamethrower. It "throws" flames. What you mean by neutral objects anyway?
-I'm not sure about your tired stuff, can you explain that more please?
Lastly, the nade thing. Biomass is important here, I'm sure after level 6 or 7 they don't one shot, and radius plays a big part... EMP effects would be interesting on the launcher, but that is what the pulse handheld is for.
Finally, in the patch notes we see they nerfed crag healing so UWE might have a different vision of the game.
Welcome to the forums, and thanks for writing about what you like / dislike in this game. I have read your post carefully, and would like to reply to some of your points.
Just generally: the game balancing has been done with Competitive games in mind (6v6), so the experience in a public (pub) server is actually different to what a comp. game would be like. With this in mind, you can see why certain decisions about game play and mechanic were made.
The Alien commander's role has always been very sedimentary, because the Aliens as a side don't rely on their comm as much (the different alien classes are almost self sufficient on their own - eg. having regen means you don't have to go back to the hive to heal, Gorges are field medics etc...). On top of that, if a lone alien doesn't want to engage with a marine, they can run away (marines don't have that luxury - a lone marines running away is going to get chased down). So, what I am saying is that is the asymmetry nature of the 2 sides. Yes, the Alien comm could be given more things to do (micro manage), but its just not really going to make much difference to the outcome (so its a bit of wasted effort to code in). I think the Drifter micro is enough - they do cost 8 t.res and are frail as hell.
Lumping upgrades - This has been discussed before (please check the older threads). The Devs had said the reason for this is because some niche abilities are just never researched because there are some abilities that are "must" haves in order to win against marines (eg. back in the day, when everything had to be researched tied to hives (not biomass), you need 2 hives for leap and bile. There was no chance of a comeback for aliens if they were tied to one hive, but had all the res nodes (no tech). In short, the state of the game is what it is from many many patches (we are up to build260, and when this came out a year ago it was build227 (I think). So many things were tested and tried, and added or dropped based on how it worked in the game.
To sum up what you said about what was good or bad in the text before the list, I would say the alien commander ability you mentioned are ok where they are. Some aren't very useful because it is situation specific. Rupture for example I hardly use (but I am a pub player). In a comp game, if you can rupture a group of marines and thus hinder their effectiveness to aim, the incoming alien horde would clean up. Bone wall is mandatory to trap Exos and yes, you can trap your own team and leave them to die, but that is a skill to use issue (which is what you want right?).
Here is my list of suggestions for improving Alien Commander:
- Drifters should immediately go towards the direction they are ordered when ordere there (no delay from turning around or getting shot)
- Drifters ordered to follow a lifeforms should always position themselves behind the lifeform (so they would move when the lifeform turned around)
--- This goes against your desire to have more micro and work for the Alien Commander. I think it is fine as it is. PS. they just nerfed the turn rate build260.
- Lifeform specific upgrades should be split into individual unlocks instead of being clumped together into one researchable item
- Lifeform upgrades should be organized into tiers (tier 1 upgrades require 1 hive, tier 2 requires 2 hives, etc.)
- Leap should be a tier 1 ability
--- This has been discussed and points 1 and 2 was the case in earlier builds. I think the biomass system actually works better, it forces a longer early - mid game where it was more fun to fight. Leap would be nice as tier 1 (3 biomass), but I think that is too OP in the hands of the pros and would easily wreck the game balance (in Alien's favour).
- Echoing structures should be a starting ability, not dependent on having a shift hive (this would both nerf the shift hive, and give the commander more opportunities to micro)
---Don't agree, Echo isn't really a micro-able ability. In fact, giving Echo for free is very OP, as you don't risk losing drifter or gorges that are building RTS (RT in base and Echo out). So it should have an opportunity cost (ie. Must go Shift hive, so you can't get shells and Echo).
- Bile Bomb should be a tier 2 upgrade
---This use to be the case (many builds ago, you needed 2 hives). It made camping marines going turrets very hard to stop as they can deny areas very easily with no counter from aliens.
- Crag healing rate should be buffed
- Crag healing and hive healing should not be able to overlap on lifeforms
--- Crag healing has been nerfed big time, and I don't see any problems with it as it is. You use to be able to stack Crag healing (up to 3), and that meant you can not kill a 3 crag nest without alot *ALOT* of fire power
- Fade eggs should be droppable at tier 2
---This was the case in earlier builds, but was too OP in comp. play.
Marines:
-Mines
---They cost 15 p.res / t.res and are a static defense that can be spat down by a gorge or lerk. So its fine as it is.
-Flamer / GL
---They have been nerfed from previous iterations. They are specific weapons that fill a niche role (GL is a fortress buster, and Flamer is good for setting things on fire so it doesn't work (eg. crag doesn't heal, shade doesn't cloak).
TL:DR: thanks for taking the time to write, but many things you have suggested had been tried and dropped because it didn't work. But keep playing, because its so damn fun anyway.
Completely out of context quote... but after reading that I lol'd for a few minutes.
- Crag healing rate should be buffed
Well, I agree with those two at least.