The Future of NS2 Competitive Play & Balance Mod
Zefram
Join Date: 2004-05-11 Member: 28611Members, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts, Retired Community Developer
Join Date: 2004-05-11 Member: 28611Members, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts, Retired Community Developer
I made a post on the NSL Forums asking for feedback. Thought it would need more exposure.
ensl.org/topics/1080
For bringing us NS1 and NS2, I want to thank UWE for bringing us over a decade's worth of enjoyment. Without their talents and resources, we would not have had the prodigious history of competitive play or even this community. Just look at this website, over a ten years old and still kicking. Their finger into our free time can not be underestimated. That said, as a company, their focus needs to evolve. With recent patches becoming fewer and less substantial, it appears that UWE's attention is primarily being focused more and more on Subnautica. Although, I love NS2, I can understand their decisions to work on the next thing and do not fault them at all.
I'm a playtester and a maptester, but my primary joy and work for NS2 has and always will be the competitive community. You are my first love and I will always do my best to ensure that your time with the NSL is fun and satisfying. That's our mission statement:
"The vision of the Natural Selection League (NSL) is to gather Natural Selection 2 players for international organized play. At its very core, we would simply like games to be played, in the hopes that this fosters tangible and meaningful relationships among its participants. We realize that its participants span the range of commitment, skill, and time zones and will do everything possible to cater to everyone’s needs and create the most enjoyable experience."
All this said, we look towards the future, next season, the seasons after that. If this community is to stay, and not just be sustained on life support, we need to do something to keep this game fresh, engaging, and fun. My proposal is to created a competitive balance mod for our league. It would hopefully be a mod fleshed out with useful and thoughtful changes, bugfixes, etc. A mod that is implemented into Season 5.
I've already started approaching people to contribute to his mod, but we'd like the community's opinion. Mostly, how do we approach creating this mod? Who would and how we decide on the changes? What sort of changes do we need?
If there's enough interest in this kind of mod, we'll post a detailed outline or what may be to come. Let's hear your thoughts. This mod is for you.
ensl.org/topics/1080
For bringing us NS1 and NS2, I want to thank UWE for bringing us over a decade's worth of enjoyment. Without their talents and resources, we would not have had the prodigious history of competitive play or even this community. Just look at this website, over a ten years old and still kicking. Their finger into our free time can not be underestimated. That said, as a company, their focus needs to evolve. With recent patches becoming fewer and less substantial, it appears that UWE's attention is primarily being focused more and more on Subnautica. Although, I love NS2, I can understand their decisions to work on the next thing and do not fault them at all.
I'm a playtester and a maptester, but my primary joy and work for NS2 has and always will be the competitive community. You are my first love and I will always do my best to ensure that your time with the NSL is fun and satisfying. That's our mission statement:
"The vision of the Natural Selection League (NSL) is to gather Natural Selection 2 players for international organized play. At its very core, we would simply like games to be played, in the hopes that this fosters tangible and meaningful relationships among its participants. We realize that its participants span the range of commitment, skill, and time zones and will do everything possible to cater to everyone’s needs and create the most enjoyable experience."
All this said, we look towards the future, next season, the seasons after that. If this community is to stay, and not just be sustained on life support, we need to do something to keep this game fresh, engaging, and fun. My proposal is to created a competitive balance mod for our league. It would hopefully be a mod fleshed out with useful and thoughtful changes, bugfixes, etc. A mod that is implemented into Season 5.
I've already started approaching people to contribute to his mod, but we'd like the community's opinion. Mostly, how do we approach creating this mod? Who would and how we decide on the changes? What sort of changes do we need?
If there's enough interest in this kind of mod, we'll post a detailed outline or what may be to come. Let's hear your thoughts. This mod is for you.
Comments
The contributions of community members like mendasp and samus have already corrected many of the issues players have had with the game, and have been instrumental part of sustaining the competitive community. It gives a glimpse of the potential that a strictly regulated community driven NSL mod can have. I think if we want to keep playing this game, it’s the responsibility of the community to take this to the next level, especially if development on NS2 from UWE’s end is coming to a halt.
Potential benefits:
• The competitive community knows this game best. We have all invested large numbers of hours into the game giving many of us perspective on what works and what doesn’t
• Fast turnaround on bug fixes. No need for playtester groups, as competitive teams will more than likely be able to replicate said bugs with ease
• Increased freedom in implanting key support features (look at how much CHUD has given us already)
• Community determined balance additions
• The chance to actually use gorge webs and make fade upgrades actually useful?
• Possibly a useable first person spec mode? Demo system? The possibilities are enticing
Things to be Careful of:
• The gameplay becomes substantially different to the vanilla version. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing if all the changes make the game more enjoyable, and attracts more players.
• The potential that an NSL mod could segregate the competitive community. Large departures from the original gameplay such as the removal of cysts or the removal of alien commander would potentially cause massive rifts. Changes would need to be well thought out.
• Ensuring that said changes are beneficial to all levels of the comp community, from premier all the way down to the lowest divisions
In my mind, UWE have done a great job with the game already. But we have to face facts – they are an indie studio, with an indie budget, and can only do so much. There are certainly avenues that they can take on their end to increase longevity and support the creation of official content via things like cosmetic sales akin to TF2/CS:GO/Dota2/LoL. However, I suspect that any new official content supported by these avenues will likely not filter through to things like balance, supporting functionality or performance changes, simply because the budget will not support these changes.
I do not see an NSL mod as being counterproductive to the vanilla game. Much like Sewlek’s beta mod, I believe an NSL mod will help to show how the game can be made better, and hopefully help to sustain and hopefully attract more to our community. There’s a reason why many of us spend so much time in this game – it’s fun, it’s different from anything else out there, and the mechanics are refreshing.
I am a strong supporter of this idea.
I know I don't only speak for myself here when I say that I am a casual pub player who hasn't got the time to play comp (and even if I decided to make it a priority to play more, which I wouldn't mind since I think NS2 is a great game, I don't have a reliable, nor fast Internet connection and would need to move house to have a possibility of ever solving that).
I'd say I am fairly highly skilled (325h) on pub, and if there were a comp-supported NSL mod with better QoL improvements, and more 'vets' hanging around on servers with those mods installed, I have much better games when I play with vets than with pub games (I generally enjoy games where people discuss strategy and commanders have a plan and people use their mics) and would more likely join this kind of server.
A large part of a player's experience, and ultimately deciding which 'community' to be a part of will depend on their individual experience in-game. Are players kind, netural, abusive? I think personal player dynamics have a greater effect on community 'splitting' than creating a promod for casuals and enthusiasts and also new players that like the game and want to learn from 'better' players.
Basically, community dynamics are a hidden influence we neglect, and improving players' QoL and improving the likelihood that they will find skilled players over ignorant ones will improve the size of the community we'd like to have.
But something big like 'remove cysts' would be problematic.
In other words, it is my opinion that a competitive balance mod would not need to change core mechanics. Prevent it from being to different then NS2.
HUD changes for example, are perfectly fine. The same for bug fixes, stability etc.
Also maps, more maps! Make a NSL mappack part of such a mod? I strongly believe we could all do better supporting custom maps.
Isn't friendly fire already a pretty large change?
Yes, yes it is.. Im sort of against FF because its a large change.
That one large change made it in, does not mean we should open the door to more of them.
It punishes really lazy alien play during engagements since you have to aim instead of mindlessly holding m1. It hardly affects marine play.
You haven't seen me flailing around my shotgun when Fades are warping about and meatshot my team-mate right behind me because he was hugging me afraid of the Fade.
http://youtu.be/plWnm7UpsXk?t=8s
But really, it definitely effects marine play to a small margin at certain stages of the game and in certain scenarios. I've eaten shotgun blasts from friendlies.. / gotten picked by a teammate after receiving two bites with A0 and shooting a skulk on me.
'omg fades'
'hey a 2 legged thingy..BLAM'
'ow that wasnt the fade'
At least once a month.
I'd for one like to see more strategies become more viable to shake things up. Dare I say, Exo Strategy???
And it would be a way to fit the game to OUR vision. I'm in favor of such an initiative. But, just as DC Darkling, I do not wish to see some major changes. This would be some kind of balance mod, right? Right?
Chet it out here- http://www.ensl.org/articles/866 and please feel free to leave feedback (preferably after you've played a few games on it- no armchair theorycrafting ;P)
Big thanks to dragon for taking the time to tweak in-game numbers for our mod.
Just curious on why you think the hard counter needs to come back? I feel that the 2 hallucination cap makes them manageable right now without a scan/obs counter.
Because they are just bullet sponges, if they didn't take any damage I wouldn't have a problem with it. Maybe make it possible to shoot through them even.
Also I found out this weekend this mod is separate from NSL mod making it playable on any public server that wants to do it. Gibs server was running this and while I honestly wouldn't have known had I not been told I'm glad public servers have the option to do this. Hopefully others pick up on it.
However, with 450hp I feel that cysts are cleared too easily now, especially once W1 is up. Would it be possible to buff cysts in another means? Possibly increasing build speed, or cyst spread speed, or even reduce the time it takes before you can replace a cyst in a general area once it gets cleared (They have so little HP when dropped it shouldn't be that much of an issue to clear).
However, the latter feels as though it may make decysting harvesters pointless since it could get recysted quicker. I wouldn't mind seeing cyst spread infestation faster to compensate for being easily dealt with now.