I don't want to get into a big argument over this but I will give you context.
His benchmark is objective within the scope of his own system, however he used it as an argument of a "universal", as Santa put it, scope making it subjective in my eyes.
Agree or disagree, I don't really care. I get better performance out of Combat than NS2, so "objective" benchamark or not, it does not apply to my to my system.
I can only objectively tell you that every time I look at the FPS counter in combat vs in vanilla, it's higher in combat by somewhere around 20% on my system.
What was remiss of me was not putting in the qualifier that 'YMMV' to my previous comments - but regardless of that, my own experience is that the performance is better in combat on my system.
I don't doubt you when you say it's worse on your system, if I recall Syknik said a similar thing and I trust both of you know what you're talking about here. As a comp player myself, too, I am aware of microstuttering and other performance issues that aren't necessarily directly evident from just looking at fps, either, and I also find combat quite good here.
There clearly is some variability, and that isn't great.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Sadly SA Combat server performance is abysmal compared to the already not ideal ns2 vanilla performance.
Either that or the servers they use for SA combat are much much much weaker in power.
Pretty much every SA combat server atm experienced tickrate, cpu and bandwith issues. The only one not experiencing this also is prone to crashes.
Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Hi all,
Just a thought on the NS2:Combat. Not to add fuel to the already raging fire, but I have to agree with FLG and UWE to make Combat a SA. From a potential market point of view, that is the smarter decision. If you make it a DLC for NS2, your possible audience is the NS2 community (goodness knows it is dedicated, but not large). So the only really viable strategy is to try and market this game to more than NS2 players. I am not here to argue whether their strategy is working or that the game is good or not, we should view this as a pure economic decision. Yes, they could have offered a larger discount for NS2 owners, but that is up to the developer of the game, we have no right in demanding such treatment.
I have read much negativity on the Steam page reviews etc... And some of these are valid, but most are not (given some players have 0.5hr game time) then give a negative review. That is unfair to the game and really doesn't reflect our community well (especially given all negative review compare Combat to NS2).
30 days average is something stupid to look at since the game was released 5 days ago.
18 is the average number of players during pre-release
But yes, the daily peak is around 60 now...
Hopefully things will improve when reviews from popular sites/youtubers start coming out. TotalBiscuit tweeted about playing the game so there may be a WTF is... coming, which may boost sales a bit.
It's a shame that so few people are playing on launch, because with some improvements this game could be stellar. I'm already enjoying the heck out of it.
There is way too much negativity towards Combat. It is a very fun twitchy shooter, and way more polished than the original NS2/1 mod. Balance is way better with the simple changes of level required for some abilities, CC shield, and timer on refund (4mn iirc).
i did not know when it was released, but since it was what the only stats i could find on steamcharts i though i might share it here if people was unaware of it.
Hi all,
Just a thought on the NS2:Combat. Not to add fuel to the already raging fire, but I have to agree with FLG and UWE to make Combat a SA. From a potential market point of view, that is the smarter decision.
Potential market? NS2 seems to have saturated its IP's potential market with all the sales etc over the past few years.
Like, everyone's been pointing this out.
If you make it a DLC for NS2, your possible audience is the NS2 community (goodness knows it is dedicated, but not large). So the only really viable strategy is to try and market this game to more than NS2 players
That's the thing though; 'ns2 community', 'ns2 players' and 'people who own ns2' are several distinct groups of people.
Your audience for a DLC release isn't just the NS2 community, it's all the people that already own NS2 but are not part of the community or even active players (and good grief, they exist in their thousands)
Its all those people that loved the IP of NS2 but simply didn't have 100s of hours to pour into the game to get good enough for it to become fun.
It's all those people that, like the friend who I tried to introduce to the game (and im gonna assume a bunch of the friends of people reading this post), greatly preferred combat mod servers due to the simplified gameplay but did not continue playing because at the time it was rough and buggy and performance was still awful.
The ones who bought NS2, enjoyed it, but not quite enough to warrant spending yet another 15 euros just to play the game they wanted in the first place.
And of course, all the people that play NS2 every day but miss the opportunity to warm up before a game with a few rounds of twitchy combat, without having to switch executables.
Seriously that's like 1000s of potential players customers, compared to... I dont know how many imaginary fans you want to magic up out of thin air.
It's hardly FLG's fault (LOL PUN) though; they were set up for a fall the moment they were asked by UWE to do something the entire community at large seemed to think was a bad idea (at least in my experience, everyone seemed to think it was insane. I agreed but kept my faith that we are stupid peons and UWE/FLG know themselves some biznizz).
It wasn't FLG's place to decide who to cater to- UWE thought combat would have more instant mass-appeal than NS2 but they wanted FLG to bear the weight of getting it out there (obviously themselves being busy with SN stuff). UWE jumped hungrily at the chance to become a publisher. And FLG jumped at a chance to work on something they loved in exchange for currency. A chance to become a real game developer.
If you can't see the merit in catering to the core fanbase (you know, the people who truly, truly love this game) rather than try to attract an assofar completely seperate, new fanbase, well I just don't know what to say to you, because that doesn't make a blind bit of sense. And in practice, the sales figures kind of back me up on this.
I hope this sour taste does not linger and that FLG have some tricks up their sleeve still. It seems a damn shame for such a beautiful creature as NS2:C to spend so little time appreciated on this earth.
And it will be dropping rapidly... All You do in ns2:Co is fighting whips/hydras/webs/turrets one gorge healing it can stand an army of marines. What should they do in my opinion:
- Remove whips or lower there HP dramatically. I say no to wall of lameness
- Lower Gorges HP, they don't retreat when they are getting shoot its just stupid. They just heal and still stay behind wall of lameness. Gorge is more a tank then onos constantly healing it self with carpace.
- Make webs less visible/transparent.
- Make shootgun spread more cumulated (if not ppl will just use railgun insteed)
- Devour takes to much damage from inside marine, lower it.
I would make it work like stomp but in air. When you get hit with devour you go down on the floor like with stomp, with small damage but jets could not fly away but still could shoot (grounding ambility).
- make scan/ammo/hp packs on demand (key with cooldown).
- fades need more HP, they are to weak, ppl prefer to stay lerk until onos.
- lerk is a flying fortress only railgun can kill it right now i would lower its HP.
- FIX SERVER REG PROBLEM (i have many shadowplay demos where i like to see if its my bad aim or just a reg problem and it's most of the times reg problem (blood every where, aim centrally on target no damage at all), it may be just multiplay 24 slot server being bad.
- Gorge tunnels should work faster in/out anim.
- Add more damage to skulk bite so its not para 2 bites any more.
- Onos CC damage WAY to much. 2-3 onos rush when they reach CC it's a WIN/WIN situation no way to stop it even with flamethrower (thay just have to wait for exos to go out to much, exos are to slow to move back in time).
Maybe im mistaken with my judgment on the balance, but this is what i would try to change.
From a business point of view, releasing Combat as a free addition to NS2 made no sense. UWE would have to pay FLG for development and pour more money into marketing in hopes of attracting players who don't already own NS2 losing quite a large chunk of initial sales that ware bound to come from the NS2 community.
Keep in mind that UWE has pretty much moved on from NS2 at this point so the idea of pumping money into a project like this with potentially little returns seems fairly ludicrous.
As a standalone Combat has a better chance of making a profit, even if its from angry NS2 players who bought the game for the sole purpose of writing an angry review on steam after 20 minutes of total play time.
At the very least its something FLG can put in their portfolio.
That's the thing though; 'ns2 community', 'ns2 players' and 'people who own ns2' are several distinct groups of people.
Your audience for a DLC release isn't just the NS2 community, it's all the people that already own NS2 but are not part of the community or even active players (and good grief, they exist in their thousands)
I'm curios how you think that a dlc of a mod that has always existed, would ever attract said demographic.
Its all those people that loved the IP of NS2 but simply didn't have 100s of hours to pour into the game to get good enough for it to become fun.
Actually, learning to field play is what takes 100s (or 1000s imo) of hours. Learning to command for example takes maybe 5 hours (of raw commander training, not playtime) - learning to command well; maybe 80 or something. So I don't agree for a second that combat is a good product for that specific audience.
The ones who bought NS2, enjoyed it, but not quite enough to warrant spending yet another 15 euros just to play the game they wanted in the first place.
If they don't have 15 euros to spend, why does it matter whether it is SA or dlc?
I feel really bad for FLG at this point.
They are being shafted by both the NS2 community who until recently ware cheering them on and UWE who seem to be giving very little public support to Faultline as their publisher.
I had a thing or two to say about FLGs marketing strategy a while back, and I still stand by what I said. It wasn't hyped up enough and the business model and price came too late to allow people to adapt to the idea.
However, the 96 hour stream was a brilliant move and did a lot to boost interest pre release.
Too little too late? Maybe, but it's not easy to get on the radar, and guess who usually handles marketing. That right, the publisher.
To me, it looks like FLG ware left up to their own devices in that regard.
In my eyes, they've been left high and dry.
To be this cruel though, and essentially bury FLG without even giving the game a fair go is way out of line.
And it will be dropping rapidly... All You do in ns2:Co is fighting whips/hydras/webs/turrets one gorge healing it can stand an army of marines. What should they do in my opinion:
- Remove whips or lower there HP dramatically. I say no to wall of lameness
- Lower Gorges HP, they don't retreat when they are getting shoot its just stupid. They just heal and still stay behind wall of lameness. Gorge is more a tank then onos constantly healing it self with carpace.
- Make webs less visible/transparent.
- Make shootgun spread more cumulated (if not ppl will just use railgun insteed)
- Devour takes to much damage from inside marine, lower it.
I would make it work like stomp but in air. When you get hit with devour you go down on the floor like with stomp, with small damage but jets could not fly away but still could shoot (grounding ambility).
- make scan/ammo/hp packs on demand (key with cooldown).
- fades need more HP, they are to weak, ppl prefer to stay lerk until onos.
- lerk is a flying fortress only railgun can kill it right now i would lower its HP.
- FIX SERVER REG PROBLEM (i have many shadowplay demos where i like to see if its my bad aim or just a reg problem and it's most of the times reg problem (blood every where, aim centrally on target no damage at all), it may be just multiplay 24 slot server being bad.
- Gorge tunnels should work faster in/out anim.
- Add more damage to skulk bite so its not para 2 bites any more.
- Onos CC damage WAY to much. 2-3 onos rush when they reach CC it's a WIN/WIN situation no way to stop it even with flamethrower (thay just have to wait for exos to go out to much, exos are to slow to move back in time).
Maybe im mistaken with my judgment on the balance, but this is what i would try to change.
You can buy cluster grenades pretty fast, use them on the hydras, shoot the damaged gorge dead and finish off the whip. Works like a charm. If that doesn't work, be the smart rine that attacks from behind or ignores it and fight more important fights. If it happens lategame, use a Flamethrower, they eat a gorge fortress under four seconds or buy a rail gun exo and shoot through everything the gorge could throw between you and his/her rapid death. I don't see a problem here.
And for the Onos, yes a lvl3 focus Onos does a lot of damage to the CC, but a single minigun Exo can kill the whole armor of the hive with one fireburst. What is the time until the weapon gets too hot, 3 seconds? I think the Onos is fine, marines just need to coordinate a defence and a offence or use a PG. What I see often is that ALL marines buy only selfish weapon upgrades and ignore the PG. Then they bunch together at one bloody place, build sentries and spamm every noo...ehh, rookie alien that happens to pass their way until someone with the slightess sense of tactic say: ignore those campers, just take the other way and rush the CC -> gg!
What I see in balanced matches is nontheless, that Oni are faster and therefor if both teams rush all in with Exos and Oni/Gorge, the aliens have an advantage in time and therefor win more often in such a situation. But I don't mind that. That makes the game balanced. Rines can just camp and amass kills and upgrade points, but aliens still have the advantage of speed. That is fair in my eyes.
I also love to play the Fade. Phantom Fade with lvl3 Focus Stab from behind is deadly. But if they see you, boy oh boy, you are dead xD (also kinda fair, but that all depends on the alien upgrade build)
P.S.: I hope you all experiment with the upgrades. There are pretty sweet builds out there. Maybe rines need one more skill tree. I posted an awesome idea in the FLG forum for a melee rine. Would love that
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
My BIGGEST 2 issues with SA combat, and two of the biggest reasons why I rarely play it are:
* lols near silent LMG. I do not now about the rest of you, but I dislike constant death from long range any direction by a weapon which is near impossible to hear on that range.
* server performance.
Do not kid yourself with what they said.. Play SA combat with netstats on and you will SEE how absolute horrible the server performance is.
* Tickrates in red.
* red plugs
* crashing
* warping
* rubberbanding
* lack of bandwith
The list goes on.
At the moment I only play combat if one server which proved stable has room, and preferably on marine side so I do not have the bloody death to silent lmg.
However, the 96 hour stream was a brilliant move and did a lot to boost interest pre release.
The stream itself was sound, however you have to wonder how many of the players that are playing the game now got a free giveaway copy from the stream... They gave away what, 90 copies? Less than that are playing the game.
To be this cruel though, and essentially bury FLG without even giving the game a fair go is way out of line.
I think that people have different definitions of what is a fair go or not, sometimes the first impression is everything, others are more tolerant but I don't think its out of line at all. While faultline games don't deserve personal threats and insults, any other criticism or praise for combat is 100% warranted. Faultline Games are accountable for the games they produce no? After all it is up to them to make the game that people want to play, they understand that just as much as we do. All game developers are competing in the same market and going after the same players (technically).
But yes, FLG if you are reading this, bad luck choosing a game that was in my opinion bound to fail from day one unless completely redone, but as someone else mentioned, don't let this hurt future endeavors. I would love to see a game completely separate from UWE and the NS franchise because I know you guys are talented people. The rare public appearances after the release of combat from the devs/community manager have appeared to be quite salty as well. I don't think it reflects very professionally but I can understand the frustration.
@sebb It's not their opinion I have a problem with, no one is forced to like anything. It's writing negative reviews on steam with a 0,2 hour play time on record that I find to be unfair.
@sebb the valid complaints about combat are fine, though they are rarely presented in a balanced fashion (welcome to the interwebs, of course). FLG do however appear to have been left out to dry by UWE, completely unsupported having, at UWE's instigation, created combat rather than an unrelated standalone game. Some of the complaints are unfairly levelled at FLG, because the details are not known. What Ghoul has tried to do in this thread is redress the balance a bit so that people can understand why certain decisions were taken. The folly of those decisions may now come apparent, but I don't think FLG had very much choice a year ago when they started out, and they should rightly have expected more support from UWE as a publisher than they got.
Some people complain about any minor thing which will likely be patched - while they might be valid complaints, a more grown up way is to engage with the developers openly about how they can improve the game (and they are very open to this, so there's really no excuse). Some of the larger complaints are basically ridiculous, like saying the combat should be a free part of NS2. FLG didn't have that option, and I'm sure they expected more support from UWE after the suggestion of making combat SA.
Would they have been better off making a totally different game SA? Probably. Should they have expected the lack of advertising and overt support from UWE? No.
It could have been quite different. It still can be with some push to market the game, but it's going to be very hard now for sure. I for one am happy to help them improve the game and get the word out as much as possible. I think if Combat CAN succeed, that NS2 can benefit from that as well.
Unfortunately, people like Maxx and me are in the minority, it seems - even on these forums of die-hard NS2 fans where, frankly, I expected a more measured response.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Everyone keeps saying it's been a year, and I am pretty sure this only came about earlier this year. They've had more like 6-8months to work on this.
As for the game itself, for me, the only thing wrong with it is that they didn't fix the things that are broken in NS2, and thus left them broken in Combat.
For me the single biggest broken element is the difficulty of playing aliens for new players. As combat is supposed to be a drop in-out game, this should have been addressed, and would have led to a much more stable player base, as currently, it is still too hard for new players to avoid getting absolutely murdered as aliens in their first few hours of playing, if they stick around that long.
30 days average is something stupid to look at since the game was released 5 days ago.
18 is the average number of players during pre-release
But yes, the daily peak is around 60 now...
Holy shit 60? I assumed it would be low but not that low. When combat play testing first started I think there was only 1 active server with the mod on it. Why would people buy the same game 8 months later for money when they could play it for free at the time. Sure elements were added to mix it up a bit, new maps were created but at the end of the day ns2 combat was a small simple game. You still felt like you were playing the mod with just a different UI and tech paths.
For what it's worth, Combat is now in the top 10 of Steam's "popular new releases". Not sure how that ranking is computed, but it may at least make the game more visible to a wider audience.
If I wasn't playing NS2 already, I think this would be the first time I'd ever hear of it. So let's hope it helps with the sales/player count.
Comments
His benchmark is objective within the scope of his own system, however he used it as an argument of a "universal", as Santa put it, scope making it subjective in my eyes.
Agree or disagree, I don't really care. I get better performance out of Combat than NS2, so "objective" benchamark or not, it does not apply to my to my system.
Yes
I can only objectively tell you that every time I look at the FPS counter in combat vs in vanilla, it's higher in combat by somewhere around 20% on my system.
What was remiss of me was not putting in the qualifier that 'YMMV' to my previous comments - but regardless of that, my own experience is that the performance is better in combat on my system.
I don't doubt you when you say it's worse on your system, if I recall Syknik said a similar thing and I trust both of you know what you're talking about here. As a comp player myself, too, I am aware of microstuttering and other performance issues that aren't necessarily directly evident from just looking at fps, either, and I also find combat quite good here.
There clearly is some variability, and that isn't great.
Either that or the servers they use for SA combat are much much much weaker in power.
Pretty much every SA combat server atm experienced tickrate, cpu and bandwith issues. The only one not experiencing this also is prone to crashes.
Just a thought on the NS2:Combat. Not to add fuel to the already raging fire, but I have to agree with FLG and UWE to make Combat a SA. From a potential market point of view, that is the smarter decision. If you make it a DLC for NS2, your possible audience is the NS2 community (goodness knows it is dedicated, but not large). So the only really viable strategy is to try and market this game to more than NS2 players. I am not here to argue whether their strategy is working or that the game is good or not, we should view this as a pure economic decision. Yes, they could have offered a larger discount for NS2 owners, but that is up to the developer of the game, we have no right in demanding such treatment.
I have read much negativity on the Steam page reviews etc... And some of these are valid, but most are not (given some players have 0.5hr game time) then give a negative review. That is unfair to the game and really doesn't reflect our community well (especially given all negative review compare Combat to NS2).
Avarage players, Last 30 Days: 18
30 days average is something stupid to look at since the game was released 5 days ago.
18 is the average number of players during pre-release
But yes, the daily peak is around 60 now...
Hopefully things will improve when reviews from popular sites/youtubers start coming out. TotalBiscuit tweeted about playing the game so there may be a WTF is... coming, which may boost sales a bit.
It's a shame that so few people are playing on launch, because with some improvements this game could be stellar. I'm already enjoying the heck out of it.
Like, everyone's been pointing this out.
That's the thing though; 'ns2 community', 'ns2 players' and 'people who own ns2' are several distinct groups of people.
Your audience for a DLC release isn't just the NS2 community, it's all the people that already own NS2 but are not part of the community or even active players (and good grief, they exist in their thousands)
Its all those people that loved the IP of NS2 but simply didn't have 100s of hours to pour into the game to get good enough for it to become fun.
It's all those people that, like the friend who I tried to introduce to the game (and im gonna assume a bunch of the friends of people reading this post), greatly preferred combat mod servers due to the simplified gameplay but did not continue playing because at the time it was rough and buggy and performance was still awful.
The ones who bought NS2, enjoyed it, but not quite enough to warrant spending yet another 15 euros just to play the game they wanted in the first place.
And of course, all the people that play NS2 every day but miss the opportunity to warm up before a game with a few rounds of twitchy combat, without having to switch executables.
Seriously that's like 1000s of potential players customers, compared to... I dont know how many imaginary fans you want to magic up out of thin air.
It's hardly FLG's fault (LOL PUN) though; they were set up for a fall the moment they were asked by UWE to do something the entire community at large seemed to think was a bad idea (at least in my experience, everyone seemed to think it was insane. I agreed but kept my faith that we are stupid peons and UWE/FLG know themselves some biznizz).
It wasn't FLG's place to decide who to cater to- UWE thought combat would have more instant mass-appeal than NS2 but they wanted FLG to bear the weight of getting it out there (obviously themselves being busy with SN stuff). UWE jumped hungrily at the chance to become a publisher. And FLG jumped at a chance to work on something they loved in exchange for currency. A chance to become a real game developer.
If you can't see the merit in catering to the core fanbase (you know, the people who truly, truly love this game) rather than try to attract an assofar completely seperate, new fanbase, well I just don't know what to say to you, because that doesn't make a blind bit of sense. And in practice, the sales figures kind of back me up on this.
I hope this sour taste does not linger and that FLG have some tricks up their sleeve still. It seems a damn shame for such a beautiful creature as NS2:C to spend so little time appreciated on this earth.
- Remove whips or lower there HP dramatically. I say no to wall of lameness
- Lower Gorges HP, they don't retreat when they are getting shoot its just stupid. They just heal and still stay behind wall of lameness. Gorge is more a tank then onos constantly healing it self with carpace.
- Make webs less visible/transparent.
- Make shootgun spread more cumulated (if not ppl will just use railgun insteed)
- Devour takes to much damage from inside marine, lower it.
I would make it work like stomp but in air. When you get hit with devour you go down on the floor like with stomp, with small damage but jets could not fly away but still could shoot (grounding ambility).
- make scan/ammo/hp packs on demand (key with cooldown).
- fades need more HP, they are to weak, ppl prefer to stay lerk until onos.
- lerk is a flying fortress only railgun can kill it right now i would lower its HP.
- FIX SERVER REG PROBLEM (i have many shadowplay demos where i like to see if its my bad aim or just a reg problem and it's most of the times reg problem (blood every where, aim centrally on target no damage at all), it may be just multiplay 24 slot server being bad.
- Gorge tunnels should work faster in/out anim.
- Add more damage to skulk bite so its not para 2 bites any more.
- Onos CC damage WAY to much. 2-3 onos rush when they reach CC it's a WIN/WIN situation no way to stop it even with flamethrower (thay just have to wait for exos to go out to much, exos are to slow to move back in time).
Maybe im mistaken with my judgment on the balance, but this is what i would try to change.
Keep in mind that UWE has pretty much moved on from NS2 at this point so the idea of pumping money into a project like this with potentially little returns seems fairly ludicrous.
As a standalone Combat has a better chance of making a profit, even if its from angry NS2 players who bought the game for the sole purpose of writing an angry review on steam after 20 minutes of total play time.
At the very least its something FLG can put in their portfolio.
Actually, learning to field play is what takes 100s (or 1000s imo) of hours. Learning to command for example takes maybe 5 hours (of raw commander training, not playtime) - learning to command well; maybe 80 or something. So I don't agree for a second that combat is a good product for that specific audience.
If they don't have 15 euros to spend, why does it matter whether it is SA or dlc?
Does anyone else see the irony in this statement?
They are being shafted by both the NS2 community who until recently ware cheering them on and UWE who seem to be giving very little public support to Faultline as their publisher.
I had a thing or two to say about FLGs marketing strategy a while back, and I still stand by what I said. It wasn't hyped up enough and the business model and price came too late to allow people to adapt to the idea.
However, the 96 hour stream was a brilliant move and did a lot to boost interest pre release.
Too little too late? Maybe, but it's not easy to get on the radar, and guess who usually handles marketing. That right, the publisher.
To me, it looks like FLG ware left up to their own devices in that regard.
In my eyes, they've been left high and dry.
To be this cruel though, and essentially bury FLG without even giving the game a fair go is way out of line.
You can buy cluster grenades pretty fast, use them on the hydras, shoot the damaged gorge dead and finish off the whip. Works like a charm. If that doesn't work, be the smart rine that attacks from behind or ignores it and fight more important fights. If it happens lategame, use a Flamethrower, they eat a gorge fortress under four seconds or buy a rail gun exo and shoot through everything the gorge could throw between you and his/her rapid death. I don't see a problem here.
And for the Onos, yes a lvl3 focus Onos does a lot of damage to the CC, but a single minigun Exo can kill the whole armor of the hive with one fireburst. What is the time until the weapon gets too hot, 3 seconds? I think the Onos is fine, marines just need to coordinate a defence and a offence or use a PG. What I see often is that ALL marines buy only selfish weapon upgrades and ignore the PG. Then they bunch together at one bloody place, build sentries and spamm every noo...ehh, rookie alien that happens to pass their way until someone with the slightess sense of tactic say: ignore those campers, just take the other way and rush the CC -> gg!
What I see in balanced matches is nontheless, that Oni are faster and therefor if both teams rush all in with Exos and Oni/Gorge, the aliens have an advantage in time and therefor win more often in such a situation. But I don't mind that. That makes the game balanced. Rines can just camp and amass kills and upgrade points, but aliens still have the advantage of speed. That is fair in my eyes.
I also love to play the Fade. Phantom Fade with lvl3 Focus Stab from behind is deadly. But if they see you, boy oh boy, you are dead xD (also kinda fair, but that all depends on the alien upgrade build)
P.S.: I hope you all experiment with the upgrades. There are pretty sweet builds out there. Maybe rines need one more skill tree. I posted an awesome idea in the FLG forum for a melee rine. Would love that
* lols near silent LMG. I do not now about the rest of you, but I dislike constant death from long range any direction by a weapon which is near impossible to hear on that range.
* server performance.
Do not kid yourself with what they said.. Play SA combat with netstats on and you will SEE how absolute horrible the server performance is.
* Tickrates in red.
* red plugs
* crashing
* warping
* rubberbanding
* lack of bandwith
The list goes on.
At the moment I only play combat if one server which proved stable has room, and preferably on marine side so I do not have the bloody death to silent lmg.
I think that people have different definitions of what is a fair go or not, sometimes the first impression is everything, others are more tolerant but I don't think its out of line at all. While faultline games don't deserve personal threats and insults, any other criticism or praise for combat is 100% warranted. Faultline Games are accountable for the games they produce no? After all it is up to them to make the game that people want to play, they understand that just as much as we do. All game developers are competing in the same market and going after the same players (technically).
But yes, FLG if you are reading this, bad luck choosing a game that was in my opinion bound to fail from day one unless completely redone, but as someone else mentioned, don't let this hurt future endeavors. I would love to see a game completely separate from UWE and the NS franchise because I know you guys are talented people. The rare public appearances after the release of combat from the devs/community manager have appeared to be quite salty as well. I don't think it reflects very professionally but I can understand the frustration.
Some people complain about any minor thing which will likely be patched - while they might be valid complaints, a more grown up way is to engage with the developers openly about how they can improve the game (and they are very open to this, so there's really no excuse). Some of the larger complaints are basically ridiculous, like saying the combat should be a free part of NS2. FLG didn't have that option, and I'm sure they expected more support from UWE after the suggestion of making combat SA.
Would they have been better off making a totally different game SA? Probably. Should they have expected the lack of advertising and overt support from UWE? No.
It could have been quite different. It still can be with some push to market the game, but it's going to be very hard now for sure. I for one am happy to help them improve the game and get the word out as much as possible. I think if Combat CAN succeed, that NS2 can benefit from that as well.
Unfortunately, people like Maxx and me are in the minority, it seems - even on these forums of die-hard NS2 fans where, frankly, I expected a more measured response.
As for the game itself, for me, the only thing wrong with it is that they didn't fix the things that are broken in NS2, and thus left them broken in Combat.
For me the single biggest broken element is the difficulty of playing aliens for new players. As combat is supposed to be a drop in-out game, this should have been addressed, and would have led to a much more stable player base, as currently, it is still too hard for new players to avoid getting absolutely murdered as aliens in their first few hours of playing, if they stick around that long.
Holy shit 60? I assumed it would be low but not that low. When combat play testing first started I think there was only 1 active server with the mod on it. Why would people buy the same game 8 months later for money when they could play it for free at the time. Sure elements were added to mix it up a bit, new maps were created but at the end of the day ns2 combat was a small simple game. You still felt like you were playing the mod with just a different UI and tech paths.
If I wasn't playing NS2 already, I think this would be the first time I'd ever hear of it. So let's hope it helps with the sales/player count.